When you're director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, talking money from billionaires is part of the job description. But now LACMA Director Michael Govan faces a tougher task: hailing Eli Broad's generosity and opening LACMA's new Broad Museum of Contemporary Art while Broad tells the world how he decided not to give the museum his art collection.
"Eli has never changed his story with LACMA," Govan said on the afternoon after Broad's decision hit the headlines last week. "He has never promised something he hasn't delivered. . . . He's made a huge investment in this place."
Indeed, Broad footed the $56-million cost of putting up the new building and put up about $10 million more to buy two artworks for the inside. But LACMA's connection with Broad is "an evolving relationship," Govan said.
On Feb. 16, LACMA will unveil the building, nicknamed BCAM, with its interiors dominated by 220 pieces borrowed from Broad and his Broad Art Foundation.
Through years of plan-laying and fundraising for LACMA's expansion, Broad, a LACMA trustee, said that those and about 1,800 other artworks in his control would probably go to one or more museums eventually. But last week he declared a new strategy: Have his foundation keep all the artworks but lend them frequently.
LACMA officials say their agreement with Broad says the museum can borrow and display up to 200 works at a time from Broad and the Broad Art Foundation during Eli Broad's lifetime.
"I do imagine that many of these works will live at LACMA," said Govan. "Will they be owned by LACMA? I'm not sure it matters."
Govan and LACMA contemporary art curator Lynn Zelevansky maintain that Broad's decision was no surprise to them, but it was to the rest of the art world, which has seen LACMA left in the lurch by would-be donors including Norton Simon (who started his own museum in 1975) and Armand Hammer (who started his own museum in 1990).
Honestly, Govan was asked, who wouldn't rather have ownership than a long-term loan?
"It's just not an easy question with a collection this large," the director insisted, noting the cost of storing and caring for the works, many of which are very large, as their roles in art history grow and shrink. Ultimately, Govan said, "you want the masterpiece on view, for the public, at LACMA."
In the larger picture, "the museum can't lose," said Govan. "We've not risked anything."
