One of Los Angeles’s most high-profile museums is set to get a lot bigger just in time for the 2028 Summer Olympics.
On Wednesday, the Broad, a private museum founded by the late collector Eli Broad and his wife Edythe, announced plans to add 55,000 square feet of space, increasing the institution’s current footprint by around 70 percent. The Los Angeles Times reported that the expansion comes with a $100 million price tag—nearly as much as the original building itself cost to erect.
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Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the architecture firm in charge of the original building, will return to work on the expansion, which includes two more floors, a new area for live programming, and visible storage space.
“I can’t imagine anyone else doing as good a job or caring quite as much,” Edythe Broad said in a statement, speaking of the firm.
The Broad was founded in 2015; according to self-reported numbers, the museum receives around 900,000 visitors each year. It is known today for hosting works from the Broads’ collection, which includes an array of notable pieces by blue-chip artists, from Jeff Koons to Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as for staging exhibitions that have traveled nationally and internationally. In the past few years, the museum has done acclaimed shows featuring Keith Haring and Takashi Murakami; it is currently organizing one for Mickalene Thomas that is due to open in May.
“In the brief period since 2015, our building has become an icon in Los Angeles’s cultural and civic landscape,” said Broad director Joanne Heyler in a statement. “With this expansion, we intend to amplify The Broad’s commitment to access for all to contemporary art, offering surprising, welcoming, and imaginative experiences that honor the diversity of our public and add to the ever-growing vitality of Grand Avenue, the area that Eli Broad believed in so strongly and that he helped transform into what it is today.”
The museum said in its announcement that it would break ground on the expansion in 2025, and that the public would be able to visit the expansion by the time the Olympics open in 2028.
Source: artnews.com