LACMA revives expansion plans, thanks to Broad

Since its radical, highly publicized expansion and reconfiguration plan designed by the agency of Rem Koolhaas was cancelled last year owed to prohibitive costs and difficulty raising stocks the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has refrained from making any grand announcements. on the contrary 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 pitch uponed Italian architect Renzo Piano to build a new building that will be situated between the main museum campus and LACMA West (the of advanced age May Company building). Piano, who is widely know for of that kind projects as the Menil Collection in Houston, the Beyeler Foundation Museum in Basel and the newly opened Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, is slated to near his plans to the LACMA board upon Apr. 19 and 20, after this issue goe to pres The shoot forward has an anticipated completion date of early 2007

Koolhaas had propos razing four of the five disparate buildings upon the main campus to make way for his ambitious of recent origin facility. Broad's pledge of $50 million for the Koolhaas scheme, which had an estimated price tag of shut up to $300 million, will now stock the establishment of Broad's namesake museum instead. He is donating an additional $10 million for an acquisitions stock The museum will initiate a capital campaign to help with the increased operating outlays incurred with the new building and to supporting cushion the museum's overall endowment, which publicly stands at $80 million.

Part of Piano's mandate is to visually integrate the whole museum campus. Plans call for the way 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 1000 works in his and his wife Edythe's stellar collection of postwar art, which is commonly 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 render free of access to scholars and institutions by means of appointment. The couple's holdings include pieces through such established artists as John Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Koon Salle, Baldessari, Kruger and Sherman, and by the agency of newer names like Doug Aitken, Kara Walker, Shirin Neshat, Cecily Brown Toba Khedoori and Paul Pfeiffer. In the programming the fresh building, the LACMA staff, below the direction of chief curator Stephanie Barren, will make all curatorial decisions. Broad's works will be shown upon a rotating basis along with selections from the museum's be in possession of holdings.

Broad told A.i.A. that, one time completed, the new LACMA will have a larger footprint than the Metropolitan Museum in of recent origin York. In addition, 17 acres of land behind the museum will be available for a statuary garden and for future expansion, whereas the Met is hamstrung by means of restrictions on expanding further into Central Park. With typical civic pride, Broad also pointed without that Los Angeles--with L.A. MOCA, the Hammer Museum and LACMA--will shortly have more museum gallery space for contemporary art than any other city.

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