Broad Pledges to Pay 'Every Penny' for New LACMA Building

The plan represents a new direction for LACMA leaders, who spent most of 2002 trying to rally donors behind an ambitious proposal to raze four of the museum complex's six buildings and replace them with a single tented structure designed by celebrated Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.

In a memorandum of understanding with museum leaders, Broad has laid out plans to pay for "every penny" of a new, 70,000-square-foot building, said LACMA board Chairman Wally Weisman. The new building, tentatively dubbed the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA and projected to cost roughly $50 million, would stand along Wilshire Boulevard just east of the former May Co. building now known as LACMA West.

In addition, Broad has pledged more than $10 million to a new art acquisition fund, along with a long-term loan of more than 200 contemporary works from his own considerable collection or the even larger Broad Art Foundation collection, Weisman said. Many details remain to be hammered out, museum officials said; Broad was unavailable for comment Wednesday.

Though his offer does not spell out any permanent donation of artworks, sources close to the museum said, it appears to signal LACMA as the eventual destination for Broad's much-coveted collection, which focuses on late 20th century artists such as Jeff Koons, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Eric Fischl, Anselm Kiefer, Robert Therrien and David Salle.

Broad, a trustee of the museum, had said he was willing to contribute as much as $50 million to the Koolhaas plan, whose overall cost was estimated at $300 million or more.

But when the museum couldn't find enough other major donors, LACMA President and director Andrea Rich announced in December that she would put the Koolhaas plan on hold and find a more pragmatic alternative. This, said Weisman, is it.

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As for timing, Weisman said, Broad "is someone who wants to achieve by yesterday what might take a year or so. He'll want to achieve this as effectively and expeditiously as he can." Still, Weisman said, a board vote on a proposed architect is likely to be some months away.