Broad museum in downtown LA announces $100 million expansion

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- The Broad modern-art museum will undergo a $100 million expansion that will add 55,000 square feet of exhibition, programming and storage space to one of downtown Los Angeles' most popular cultural attractions.

"In the brief period since 2015, our building has become an icon in Los Angeles' cultural and civic landscape," Joanne Heyler, founding director of The Broad, said 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."

According to the museum, the expansion will break ground next year and be open ahead of the Los Angeles summer Olympics in 2028. The project will increase the museum's gallery space by 70%, add two top-floor open-air courtyards and include programming space "where the public will encounter boundary-breaking performances, concerts, or multimedia installations, or participate in a family weekend workshop or school program."

It will also add an "art storage vault," with various works pulled from painting racks to create varied experiences for visitors while also doubling as storage for the museum's collection.

The expansion was designed by the architectural firm of Diller Scofido + Renfro, which also designed the original museum. When completed, The Broad will stretch from Grand Avenue to Hope Street along West Second Street.

Despite the hefty cost of the expansion, museum admission will continue to be free. According to the museum, more than 5.5 million people have visited the museum since it opened in 2015 and it is now "regularly attracting nearly four times more visitors than originally envisioned."

"With Joanne Heyler's skilled leadership, The Broad museum has exceeded the expectations I shared with my late husband Eli, and it is time to set the museum on course for the future," Edythe Broad said in a statement. "The design for our expansion by Elizabeth Diller and DS+R creates new, beautiful spaces for art while preserving what already makes a visit to The Broad so special. I can't imagine anyone else doing as good a job or caring quite as much."

The museum's collection includes more than 2,000 works from the 1950s on, featuring artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Roy Lichtenstein, Takashi Murakami, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker and Andy Warhol.

"As the collection grows, it increasingly includes artists and perspectives that were historically left out of the canon and the art market, while building on existing strengths in American Pop art and socially and politically themed works across painting, sculpture, new media, and installation," according to the museum.