After weeks of conjecture, the board of the financially strapped Museum of Contemporary Art has voted to accept a $30-million bailout offer from billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, a founder and life trustee of the museum and the city's largest arts patron.
In addition, MOCA's beleaguered director, Jeremy Strick, has resigned and MOCA has appointed UCLA Chancellor Emeritus Charles E. Young as the museum's first chief executive.
The Broad deal, to be announced today, ends speculation that the museum might opt to accept a merger offer made last week by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
According to the agreement, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation will match contributions to MOCA's endowment up to $15 million and provide $3 million a year for exhibition support for five years.
In an interview Monday, Broad, a staunch downtown supporter, said he made his offer because it would be a "real blow to this city" if the downtown museum, a linchpin of the planned Grand Avenue redevelopment, did not survive.
Broad said that he was not requiring MOCA to raise $15 million in matching funds in order to receive the $15-million challenge grant but rather would match endowment funds "dollar for dollar" with what MOCA was able to raise from trustees and others, with a cap of $15 million.
"It's very simple -- they raise a dollar, the foundation puts in a dollar," Broad said.
The agreement also includes a 90-day window to "allow any responsible party to replace the Broad Foundation on identical terms."
In an interview Monday, MOCA board co-chairmen Tom Unterman and David G. Johnson said that museum trustees had pledged or promised more than $20 million in new gifts since the museum's financial troubles became public in November. The executives declined to name specific board members who were planning donations.
Broad's agreement calls for MOCA to "continue operating as an independent world-class contemporary art museum" and to maintain both its headquarters on Grand Avenue and the Geffen Contemporary space in Little Tokyo. The plan requires MOCA to "keep its collection intact and not sell any works of art."
The agreement also requires MOCA to operate with an annual budget of "no less than $13 million and no more than $16 million in cash expenses" but says that the museum may operate at a higher level if it has the cash income to do so. In recent years, the museum's budget has averaged $20 million, Unterman said.
