moca

Eli Broad To Bring Art Museum To Downtown Los Angeles

Filed under: Art, Real Estate Developments

Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad has chosen his spot. Broad and his wife Edythe have decided that the Broad Art Foundation will be settling in on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. A committee of state and local officials voted that he could lease county-owned land to build a 35,000-square-foot structure to house pieces from the collection of 2,000 pieces.

The terms of the deal are that the foundation will pay $7.7 million for a 99-year lease for the 2.5 acre piece of land. This land was once earmarked for a $3 billion complex of condos, retail stores and hotels. That project never got off the ground, and the Museum of Contemporary Art and Disney Hall were left at one end of a street that was expected to become one of the city's most vibrant areas.

Broad's museum could cost $100 million to construct and per the terms of the deal also must contribute $200 million toward its operation. The AP reports that Diller, Scofidio & Renfro has been named as the architect for the project. The design will be unveiled in October. Construction should be finished by the end of 2012.

Tags: broad art foundation, disney hall, downtown los angeles, eli broad, grand avenue, moca

Eli Broad Offers $30 Million to Floundering MOCA

by Tracy Chait (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art, Big Givers

In the wake of MOCA's public outcry for help, Eli Broad has stepped up to offer $30 million to the museum. Earlier this month, Deidre Woollard reported that Broad (above with his wife Edythe) might have been planning a contemporary art museum of his own in Beverly Hills, after an acquisition spree that included pieces by Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha and Robert Rauschenberg.

Perhaps he's refocused his efforts towards saving a contemporary art museum instead. I wrote recently about art critic Christopher's Knight's open letter to MOCA's board, ordering it to raise $25 million pronto. Looks like Broad got the memo -- though in his statement of intent in the LA Times, he urges his fellow philanthropists to take part.

"This is not a one-philanthropist town," he writes, though in the contemporary art world, the Broad name is growing awfully familiar.

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Tags: art, big givers, BigGivers, contemporary art, ContemporaryArt, eli broad, EliBroad, moca

Open Letter to MOCA Trustees: Write Checks. Many Zeros.

by Tracy Chait (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art, Big Givers

In an open letter to the board of trustees at Los Angeles's Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times is hardly circumspect about his message: give money, and give a lot of it.

MOCA's endowment is rumored to have fallen a startling $40 million or so in the past several years, and the museum has publicly contemplated renting or even selling its significant collection of art, functioning merely as an exhibit space in the future.

It's also mentioned folding in to LACMA, making the city of LA -- population nearing 4 million -- a one-museum town (yes, the Getty is nearby, as is the Norton Simon, but neither of those specialize in contemporary art nor are they geographically LA proper).

Mr. Knight urges board members to gather together and "stay in that room until you have cobbled together at least $25 million." Interestingly, that was the amount Mercedes Bass gave to the Metropolitan Opera two years ago after it announced its own financial woes. "It's really the duty of a board member to support the institution in a time of need," she told The New York Times.

I'm sure Mr. Knight and art lovers everywhere hope MOCA's board will remember those words.

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Tags: art philanthropy, ArtPhilanthropy, mercedes bass, MercedesBass, moca