“Broad also announced Monday that he has chosen the New York architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro to design the approximately 120,000-square-foot museum, which will include exhibition space, offices and a parking garage,” reports the LA Times. The Broad Foundation said the designs would not be released until October. The price tag for construction is estimated at $80 million to $100 million, which Broad will fund.

This announcement comes at an interesting time, considering the past two years of changes at the city’s two art venues. The rivalry between the town’s great museums, LACMA and MOCA is well known, which was discussed at length in the August 2010 issue of Vanity Fair.

A lot has been shifting in the LA art world as of late. This January, NYC gallerist Jeffrey Deitch [who interviewed Retna for the Juxtapoz September 2010 issue out now] took over as MOCA director, which was on the verge of collapse just a year and a half ago. In a highly publicized move, Eli Broad yanked MOCA back from the brink by pouring $30 million into the museum in late 2008.

Michael Govan is the director of LACMA. In October, LACMA will unveil the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Pavilion, a $54 million exhibition hall funded by and named for the Fiji-water-and-Pom-Wonderful-juice billionaires. “The Resnicks’ collection of European art and furniture will be one of the new building’s inaugural exhibitions,” reports Bob Colacello in his VF article. “The pavilion was designed by Renzo Piano, who also designed the adjacent Broad Contemporary Art Museum, or B-CAM, and with their stark travertine façades, sawtooth roofs, and bold red trim, the two structures complement each other nicely on the west side of LACMA’s 12-acre Wilshire Boulevard campus.

“As its formal name suggests, B-CAM’s $56 million cost was covered by the omnipresent Broad, who made his billions in home construction and life insurance. Nonetheless, the 77-year-old philanthropist let it be known a month before the building’s February 2008 opening that he would not be giving LACMA his $1.9 billion collection of 2,000 works by, among others, Robert Rauschenberg, Jeff Koons, and Cindy Sherman. Many saw this as a stab in the back to Michael Govan, who had been lured to Los Angeles from New York’s Dia Art Foundation nearly two years earlier by (among others) Broad, who was then vice-chair of the LACMA board and its dominant power. Instead, Broad, now a non-voting life trustee at LACMA and the de facto head of MOCA’s board, announced this spring that he will build his own museum to house his hoard.

“The truth is that Eli is L.A.’s most prominent cultural philanthropist, and if you run a museum in this city you have a relationship with him one way or another,” sums up Ann Philbin, director of the Armand Hammer Museum at UCLA.

Colacello continues:

“By late 2008, MOCA’s $40 million endowment had dwindled to $6 million. In November, Broad published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times titled Let’s Save MOCA, offering $30 million from his foundation ‘with the expectation that the museum’s board and others join in this effort to solve the institution’s financial problems.’ Michael Govan had a different idea: a merger of MOCA, which has a world-class collection of modern and contemporary art, with LACMA, which has plenty of space and a better location, to create what he felt could have been ‘the greatest museum in the country.’ Although Govan was vague when questioned by the press about how such a union would be financed, Colacello “was told on good authority that David Geffen had secretly promised $30 million to make it happen. Geffen refused to comment on any of this, saying, ‘I’m not getting into some pissing contest with Eli.’ He added, ‘Talk to Lynda Resnick.’

Bob Colacello goes to speak with Resnick, who has been involved with LACMA for over 23 years and is now a vice-chair of its board. He writes:

“She’s wild about Govan: ‘He is the visionary in the art world for the 21st century.’ Why doesn’t she get her friend David Geffen to support LACMA? ‘David is of his own mind. The Eli connection is difficult for him. Even though Eli is not involved with the museum any longer, his name is still on that building. We should have never called it a museum. How can LACMA have a museum? LACMA is the museum.”

The LA Times writes:

“Broad’s new museum raises many questions, not the least of which there is enough of an audience for contemporary art here to support so many museums. The future relationship between the new museum and MOCA also remains unclear.

“Broad said Monday that he decided against giving his collection to a museum because none had sufficient gallery space to display the artwork.

“When asked if there will be collaborative efforts between the two institutions, Broad, who serves as a co-founding chairman and life trustee of MOCA, replied the he is ‘sure there will be.’ ”

Needless to say, it will be interesting and exciting to see how to changes to the LA art scene will play out. What is clear is that the city will play home to a ton of really, really good art.

Share on Tumblr