Archinect - News

Billionaire business man, art collector and philanthropist, Eli Broad, passes away at 87

2021-05-05T18:05:00-04:00

Eli Broad, a businessman and philanthropist whose vast fortune, extensive art collection and zeal for civic improvement helped reshape the cultural landscape of Los Angeles, died on Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 87. [...] Mr. Broad (pronounced “brode”) made billions in the home-building and insurance businesses and spent a significant part of his wealth trying to make Los Angeles one of the world’s pre-eminent cultural capitals.

Broad is best known for his extensive philanthropic work focused on public education, scientific and medical research, and the visual and performing arts. He, along with his wife Edythe, has given more than $4 billion to support these efforts. Their work has placed them among the leading philanthropists in the United States.

His lasting legacy on Los Angeles is considerable with work including the creation and preservation of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the creation of the Broad, a $140 million art museum that he financed himself that features his collection of more than 2,000 contemporary works, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, in which he granted $50 million to complete the project.

In recent years, Broad has dedicated a majority of his time to his philanthropic work via his foundations, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and The Broad Art Foundation. With assets of $2.4 billion, they advocate for public education reform and promote the revitalization of Los Ang...

Archinect's critical round-up of Los Angeles' Broad Museum

2015-09-23T15:50:00-04:00

From a super-sized cheese grater, to a contraceptive sponge, to an inadvertent fun house ride, the critics have thoroughly analogized the new Broad museum in mostly positive (if occasionally biting) reviews. To follow up with Amelia's review, published earlier today, we offer some other critical perspectives on LA's latest architectural landmark.

The L.A. Times' Christopher Hawthorne frames the museum's relative success principally in terms of the political and physical struggle it took to realize it (Broad is currently suing the structure's skin fabricators for what he claims were costly, time-delaying fabrication errors). "It wouldn't be fair to say that the museum, which has moments of real charm, buckles under the burden of those expectations and conflicts. But in a number of places, including its surprisingly punchless facade, it shows the considerable strain of holding up that weight."

Hawthorne also reflects on the building in terms of Diller Scofidio + Renfro's overall body of...

Leading up to its September-20 opening, Christopher Hawthorne reviews the new Broad museum

2015-08-31T14:15:00-04:00

The elements of the Broad that have been most closely scrutinized or most often reworked, in fact, are the most uneven. It is only in the relative shadows — in the peripheral or easily overlooked spaces, or in the rooms added or enlarged late in the design process — that the architecture of the museum really comes to life.

Who pays for the new private museums after the death of their aging founders?

2015-01-08T15:16:00-05:00

From the opening of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in October to the construction of The Broad in Los Angeles now set to open this autumn, the model of the single-donor museum is thriving. [...] what will happen to these new institutions on the death of the founder or the decline in their collecting activity. [...] To what extent have these museum founders made plans to ensure the vitality and flexibility of their prized institutions beyond their own lifetimes?

Is The Broad Museum's newly unveiled facade living up to its renderings?

2015-01-02T18:31:00-05:00

The facade of Bunker Hill's The Broad museum was officially unveiled this morning as workers removed the last of the exterior scaffolding, and things are not looking quite as originally envisioned. The design, by starchitects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, was originally advertised as an "innovative veil" that will activate "two-way views that connect the museum and the street"; today it's been updated to be, well, a bit less innovative.

For comparison - the rendered promise:

The Broad Kinda Sorta Has an Opening Date: Fall 2015

2014-10-29T14:41:00-04:00

When we last checked in with Eli Broad’s eponymous downtown museum, its fall 2014 debut had been pushed back to some time in 2015. Today it was announced that the institution will open in fall 2015, although no precise date was given. [...] The multi-story building, designed Diller Scofidio + Renfro, is still in the midst of construction. When it opens it will join two MOCA facilities and the Japanese American National Museum, making the northern end of downtown something of a museum hub.

Previously:

Eli Broad’s Art Showcase in Los Angeles, Still Unfinished, Sues Over Delays

2014-06-03T21:42:00-04:00

The flagship museum of the billionaire financier and art collector Eli Broad, still under construction, has filed a $19.8 million lawsuit against a German company for what it describes as delays in fabricating the building blocks for its unusual latticed facade.

Michigan's Delayed Broad Museum Gets a Second Life With a Bizarre Zaha Hadid-Inspired Virtual World

2012-03-22T14:22:00-04:00

The opening of the sprawling Zaha Hadid-designed Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, which will soon exhibit slices of L.A.-based billionaire Eli Broad’s extensive art collection, has been postponed from this spring to the fall for reasons only vaguely stated. But never fear; for those of you chomping at the bit to see it, or who are in a particularly remote part of the world in relation to East Lansing, Michigan, MSU has just opened the Virtual Broad Art Museum.