L.A. museums are learning to share
In an unusual deal brokered by Eli Broad, a powerful donor with an interest in the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the two Los Angeles institutions will share ownership of an outsized work by L.A.-based artist Chris Burden.
The gift, to be announced today by the two museums, is "Hell Gate," a 28-foot-long, 7 1/2 -foot-high model of the Hell Gate Bridge over the East River in New York City, fashioned of metal toy construction parts.
"Hell Gate" is a joint donation, a partial purchase funded by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad and a partial gift from former tennis star John McEnroe. Although sharing ownership of artworks is not rare today, it is unusual to see such an arrangement between two museums in the same city.
It is also out of the ordinary to find such a deal initiated by a donor. MOCA Director Jeremy Strick and LACMA Director Michael Govan confirm that the cooperative arrangement was, to use Govan's words, "largely Eli's idea."
Eli Broad, founding chairman and a life trustee of MOCA, is also arguably LACMA's most influential trustee. He has given LACMA $60 million for the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, a new facility that is central to the institution's massive expansion plan, and acquisitions.
And when MOCA approached his Broad Art Foundation for the money to purchase the Burden work, Broad offered a counterproposal.
"MOCA came to us for the money, right, and I said: 'I'll tell you what, maybe it would make sense for you people to share it,' " Broad said.
"I've always believed that museums ought to share works of art rather than duplicate one another's collections; about 80% of a museum's collection is usually in storage," added Broad, whose foundation owns Burden's 2001 "Bateau de Guerre," a 400-pound battleship made of metal gasoline cans, plastic toys and other items; the work suspends from the ceiling in the Broad Foundation museum. "I thought I'd try to set an example by buying an important work of art by Chris Burden."
Broad said that his foundation provided $150,000 apiece to the two museums to purchase the work from McEnroe for $300,000. Although declining to speculate on the market price of "Hell Gate," Broad said that McEnroe's selling price was below market, making the work a partial gift from the athlete, who had owned it for about six years and was keeping the huge bridge in his New York loft apartment.
