The Broad

In 2010, Eli and Edythe Broad announced plans to open The Broad, a new, public museum of contemporary art on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles (anticipated opening: 2014). Designed by world-renowned architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the museum will be a 120,000 square foot, three-level facility, and will include approximately 50,000 square feet of gallery space on two floors, a lecture hall for up to 200 people, and a public lobby with display space and a museum shop. The project will include a state-of-the-art archive, study and art storage space that will be available to scholars and curators who want to research works in the collection and borrow artworks for their institutions through The Broad Art Foundation’s worldwide lending program. The museum will be adjacent to luminary cultural institutions such as the Music Center of Los Angeles and Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Colburn School of Music, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, forming a remarkable locus of culture in Southern California.

Dubbed “the veil and the vault,” the museum’s design merges the two key components of the building: public exhibition space and archive/storage. Rather than relegate the archive/storage to secondary status, the “vault,” plays a key role in shaping the museum experience from entry to exit. Its heavy opaque mass is always in view, hovering midway in the building. Its carved underside shapes the lobby below, while its top surface is the floor plate of the exhibition space. The vault is enveloped on all sides by the “veil,” an airy, cellular exoskeleton structure that spans across the block-long gallery and provides filtered natural daylight.

The museum’s exhibition programming will focus on the contents of the renowned contemporary art collections of Eli and Edythe Broad, which feature in total 2000 artworks by more than 200 artists and unparalleled, in-depth groupings of works by select artists such as Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Cindy Sherman, Jean-Michel Basquiat and many others.

The Broads created The Broad Art Foundation in 1984 as a pioneering lending library for contemporary artworks. Dedicated to increasing access to contemporary art for audiences worldwide, the foundation has made more than 8,000 loans to nearly 500 museums and galleries around the world. In addition to The Broad Art Foundation’s works, the loan program also makes available art from The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Collection. Together, the Broad Collections are among the most prominent collections of postwar and contemporary art in the world.

The Broad Art Foundation and The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation together comprise The Broad Foundations, which have assets of $2.4 billion. The Broad Foundations were established to advance entrepreneurship for the public good in education, science, and the arts. For more information about The Broad Foundations, please visit www.broadfoundation.org.