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 The Broad museum, 2024 | |
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| Established | September 20, 2015 (2015-09-20) |
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| Location | 221 SouthGrand Avenue,Downtown Los Angeles, California, US |
| Coordinates | 34°03′16″N118°15′04″W / 34.0544°N 118.2510°W /34.0544; -118.2510 |
| Type | Art museum |
| Collection size | Almost 2,000 |
| Founder | Eli Broad andEdythe Broad |
| Architect | Diller Scofidio + Renfro |
| Public transit access |  Los Angeles Metro Rail E Line A LineatGrand Avenue Arts/Bunker Hill |
| Website | www |
The Broad[1] (/broʊd/) is acontemporary art museum onGrand Avenue inDowntown Los Angeles. Themuseum is named for philanthropistsEli andEdythe Broad, who financed the $140 million building that houses the Broad art collections.[2] It offers free general admission to its permanent collection galleries.[2] However, not all of its events are free and admission prices may vary by exhibit and/or by event. It opened on September 20, 2015.[3]
Since 2008, Eli and Edythe Broad and the Broad Art Foundation had been considering different sites for a museum for the art collection. In November 2008, the news surfaced that Eli Broad had approachedBeverly Hills about building his museum at the southeast corner ofWilshire Boulevard andSanta Monica Boulevard.[4] In January 2010, he revealed that he was considering a 10-acre parcel on the campus ofWest Los Angeles College just outsideCulver City.[5] Meanwhile, in March 2010, theSanta Monica City Council approved an agreement in principle to lease the city-owned 2.5-acre parcel next to theSanta Monica Civic Auditorium to Eli Broad for $1 a year for 99 years while also contributing $1 million toward design costs. Broad would have paid the rest, an estimated $50 million to $70 million.[6]
In August 2010, Eli Broad announced formally that he would build a museum in Downtown Los Angeles.[7] He agreed to pay $7.7 million for a 99-year lease. Officially characterized as a grant, the money subsidized affordable-housing units at The Emerson, a high-rise residential tower next to the museum.[8]
In an invited architectural competition for the project in 2010, six architects were asked to present preliminary designs. They included Dutch architectRem Koolhaas and his firmOffice for Metropolitan Architecture; Swiss pairHerzog & de Meuron;Christian de Portzamparc from Paris; Japanese duoRyue Nishizawa andKazuyo Sejima ofSANAA; andDiller Scofidio + Renfro from New York.[9] Diller Scofidio + Renfro were eventually chosen to design the approximately 120,000-square-foot museum, which includes exhibition space, offices and a parking garage.[10][11]
In February 2015, Eli and Edythe Broad hosted a public preview of the new building, attracting some 3,500 visitors.[12]
The museum was opened by the Broads on September 20, 2015.[13] Celebrities in attendance includedBill Clinton,Reese Witherspoon,Matthew Perry,Heidi Klum, andLarry King, among others.[14]
The Broad is housed in a new building designed by architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration withGensler and structural engineering firm Leslie E. Robertson Associates.[15] Its cost has been estimated at $140 million.[16] With a location adjacent toFrank Gehry's iconicWalt Disney Concert Hall, the museum's design is intended to contrast with its bright metallic perforated[17] exterior while respecting its architectural presence by having a porous, "honeycomblike" exterior.[18] The design is based on a concept entitled "the veil and the vault". "The veil" is a porous envelope that wraps the whole building, filtering and transmitting daylight to the indoor space. This skin is composed of 2,500 rhomboidal panels of fiberglass-reinforced concrete supported by a 650-ton steel substructure.[19] The "vault" is a concrete body which forms the core of the building, dedicated to storage, laboratories, curatorial spaces and offices.[20]
The three-story museum has 50,000 square feet (4,600 m2) of exhibition space on two floors,[21] with 35,000 square feet (3,300 m2) of column-free gallery space[19] on the third floor and 15,000 square feet (1,400 m2) on the first.[22] The roof has 318 skylight monitors that admit diffused sunlight from the north.[19] In thenon-Euclidean lobby,[13] there is no front desk; instead, visitor-services associates greet guests with mobile devices.[23] Lobby and exhibitions spaces are connected by a 105-foot escalator and a glass-enclosed elevator.[24]
In 2024, The Broad announced a $100-million, 55,000-square-foot addition behind the existing structure, which would increase gallery space by 70 percent.[25] Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the addition is to take the form of a second building connecting to the original museum via a third-floor door and passageway leading to a courtyard with views of the sky.[25]The new gallery space will include artists already in the collection and new artists, e.g.Cauleen Smith,Lauren Halsey, andPatrick Martinez.[26]
In 2014, plans were published for a 24,000 square feet (2,200 m2) public plaza adjacent to The Broad, to be overseen and maintained by the museum as part of its agreement with the city.[27] Designed by the museum's architects, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, and landscape architectWalter J. Hood, theHilda Solis Plaza plaza,[26] with other streetscape improvements, is estimated to have cost $18 million, with about $10 million coming from redevelopment funds and $8 million from the museum.[28] It features a grove of 100-year-oldBarouni olive trees.[19][29]
The museum's unorthodox facade, which the architects refer to as the "veil", was unusually difficult to fabricate, leading to delays in construction.[28] In a lawsuit filed inLos Angeles County Superior Court in 2014, the museum sued German fabricatorSeele GmbH,Zurich American Insurance Company and the Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland[30] for $19.8 million in damages for allegedly failing to deliver the facade's components on schedule.[16] The Broad and Seele subsequently agreed to continue work on the museum and to face off later over the dispute.[31]
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Nabih Youssef Associates Structural Engineers is the Structural Engineer of Record. The museum and parking garage is a 6-story, 110-feet tall structure occupying a city block and enclosing about 250,000 square feet. Typical floors are two-way concrete slabs spanning to concrete columns sitting on a mix of spread footings and belled caissons. The lateral system is a special reinforced concrete shear walls with long perimeter walls on the north & south sides of the building and short buttressing walls in the opposite direction.
Special features include:
The interior (the Vault) is a large opaque volume that seems to hover in the middle of the space. This space holds the museum art and lending library, archive, lecture hall and offices as well as circulation.
The exterior (the Veil) is composed of 313 different glass fiber reinforced concrete hexagonal blades of varying thickness and transparency, encasing a diagonal steel lattice that together forms an airy, cellular exoskeleton draping the interior space. This space acts as the ceiling over the gallery space, allowing natural light into the space.
The Veil is not intended as a primary lateral system, more like a cladding. The remaining shear wall later system is augmented to account for the removal of the veil lateral element. A typical GFRC panel is about 8 x 5 x 1 feet and weighs approximately 1,100 lbs. At the top of the building, the veil wraps over a cantilevered roof that extends 40 feet over the Grand Avenue façade.
The Veil is supported at three points: the connections on the Second Street and GTK, and the major 32 ton, 57-feet long touchdown beam on Grand Avenue. The Grand Avenue touchdown beam sits five feet below the sidewalk.
The touchdown beam can rock about a central pivot point allowing the entire veil structure to slightly "see-saw" back and forth along its plane during a major earthquake. Each end of the beam is allowed to move up and down by ¾ inches.
The Broad houses a nearly 2,000-piece collection of contemporary art featuring 200 artists,[31] including works byCindy Sherman,Jeff Koons,Ed Ruscha,Roy Lichtenstein andAndy Warhol, including a 1963 "Single Elvis" by the latter.
Other notable installations includeYayoi Kusama'sInfinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013),Ragnar Kjartansson's expansive nine-screen[32] videoThe Visitors (2012),Julie Mehretu's 24-feet-wide canvasBeloved (Cairo) (2013), andGoshka Macuga's photo-tapestryDeath of Marxism, Women of All Lands Unite (2013).[16] The museum also owns the largest collection ofCindy Sherman works worldwide, with 129 pieces.[33]
The collection has been described byThe Washington Post as including too much "high-end trash" but "even though the bad overwhelms the great, there are great works throughout."[13]
The building also serves as headquarters for the Broad Art Foundation's lending library of contemporary works.[31]
The Broad's inaugural exhibition featured a selection of more than 250 paintings, sculptures and photographs[17] by more than 60 artists drawn exclusively from the permanent collection,[24] includingJohn Ahearn,El Anatsui,[13]Richard Artschwager,[34]John Baldessari,Jean-Michel Basquiat,Bernd and Hilla Becher,Joseph Beuys,Mark Bradford,Chris Burden,Chuck Close,John Currin,Eric Fischl,Jack Goldstein,Mark Grotjahn,Keith Haring,Damien Hirst,[35]Jasper Johns,Mike Kelley,Ellsworth Kelly (four paintings),[24]William Kentridge,[13]Anselm Kiefer,Ragnar Kjartansson,Jeff Koons,Barbara Kruger,Yayoi Kusama,Sherrie Levine,Roy Lichtenstein (10 paintings),[24]Glenn Ligon,Sharon Lockhart,Robert Longo,Goshka Macuga,Julie Mehretu,Takashi Murakami,Lari Pittman,Richard Prince,Neo Rauch,Robert Rauschenberg,Charles Ray,Ed Ruscha,Julian Schnabel,Cindy Sherman,Mark Tansey,Robert Therrien,Cy Twombly,Kara Walker,Jeff Wall,Andy Warhol (11 paintings),[24]David Wojnarowicz andChristopher Wool.[17][21]
The museum includes a free-standing restaurant on its plaza,Otium – Latin for "leisure time" – which Eli Broad developed with Bill Chait ofRépublique andBestia restaurants. It featuresTimothy Hollingsworth, a former head chef ofThe French Laundry inNapa Valley, as executive chef.[32] In September 2015,Isolated Elements, 2015, a photographic mural by the artistDamien Hirst was installed on the south facade of the restaurant; it measures nearly 84 feet by 32 feet and is based on Hirst's 1991 sculptureIsolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding, a wall-mounted cabinet filled with fish preserved informaldehyde.[35]
As of 2014, The Broad'sendowment is at $200 million, thereby larger than any museum in Los Angeles except for theJ. Paul Getty Museum.[16] The overall annual budget is $16 million, which is provided for through established funds.[36] The museum offers mostly free admission to the public, but will charge for temporary special exhibitions.[31]
Besides Eli and Edythe Broad, the Broad's Board of Governors also includes art dealerIrving Blum,Los Angeles Philharmonic CEODeborah Borda, restaurateurMichael Chow, businessmanBruce Karatz, and former ambassadorRobert H. Tuttle, among others.[37]
The museum's director is art historian Joanne Heyler.[32]
In its first year, The Broad attracted 753,000 visitors, roughly equivalent to the 2011 attendance atLos Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).[38] In 2019, more than 900,000 people visited the museum.[36]
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