LACMA revives expansion plans, thanks to Broad

Since its radical, highly publicized expansion and reconfiguration plan designed by Rem Koolhaas was cancelled last year due to prohibitive costs and difficulty raising funds, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has refrained from making any grand announcements. But reports over the past year indicate that the museum is proceeding with a scaled-back expansion and redesign, thanks to philanthropist and board member Eli Broad, who alone is footing the bill for the construction of a $50-million, three-story, 80,000-square-foot building to be called the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA, or BCAM at LACMA. Broad has selected Italian architect Renzo Piano to construct a new building that will be situated between the main museum campus and LACMA West (the old May Company building). Piano, who is widely know for such projects as the Menil Collection in Houston, the Beyeler Foundation Museum in Basel and the recently opened Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, is slated to present his plans to the LACMA board on Apr. 19 and 20, after this issue goes to press. The project has an anticipated completion date of early 2007.

Koolhaas had proposed razing four of the five disparate buildings on the main campus to make way for his ambitious new facility. Broad's pledge of $50 million for the Koolhaas scheme, which had an estimated price tag of close to $300 million, will now fund the establishment of Broad's namesake museum instead. He is donating an additional $10 million for an acquisitions fund. The museum will initiate a capital campaign to help with the increased operating expenses incurred with the new building and to bolster the museum's overall endowment, which currently stands at $80 million.

Part of Piano's mandate is to visually integrate the whole museum campus. Plans call for the street between the main campus and LACMA West to be eliminated to make way for a grand entrance pavilion; the Wilshire Boulevard facades of the existing buildings will be redesigned. BCAM will consist almost entirely of gallery spaces. Broad will loan up to 200 of the more than 1,000 works in his and his wife Edythe's stellar collection of postwar art, which is currently displayed at the Broad Art Foundation's offices in Santa Monica. For 20 years, the foundation has operated as a lending resource for museums; it is open to scholars and institutions by appointment. The couple's holdings include pieces by such established artists as Johns, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Koons, Salle, Baldessari, Kruger and Sherman, and by newer names like Doug Aitken, Kara Walker, Shirin Neshat, Cecily Brown, Toba Khedoori and Paul Pfeiffer. In the programming the new building, the LACMA staff, under the direction of chief curator Stephanie Barren, will make all curatorial decisions. Broad's works will be shown on a rotating basis along with selections from the museum's own holdings.

Broad told A.i.A. that, once completed, the new LACMA will have a larger footprint than the Metropolitan Museum in New York. In addition, 17 acres of land behind the museum will be available for a sculpture garden and for future expansion, whereas the Met is hamstrung by restrictions on expanding further into Central Park. With typical civic pride, Broad also pointed out that Los Angeles--with L.A. MOCA, the Hammer Museum and LACMA--will soon have more museum gallery space for contemporary art than any other city.

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