The Broad Will Expand, Adding More Gallery Space To Display It’s Growing Collection

30 May The Broad Will Expand, Adding More Gallery Space To Display It’s Growing Collection

Exterior rendering of the future Broad expansion from Hope Street. Courtesy of The Broad. © Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R). Rendering by Plomp.

Los Angeles, CA (March 27, 2024) — SoCal Museums member, The Broad, announced plans for an expansion that will build upon the success of The Broad’s first decade by providing enhanced public access to the growing collection, extend The Broad’s standard-setting visitor engagement, and make possible deeper offerings in live programming. Founded in 2015 with a mandate from philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad to build a large audience for contemporary art, the museum has far exceeded its own projections, having welcomed more than 5.5 million visitors to date and now regularly attracting nearly four times more visitors than originally envisioned.

The expansion, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), the acclaimed architects of the existing museum, opens a new perspective on the “veil and vault” concept they introduced in 2015, with the building’s iconic white honeycomb “veil” enveloping the “vault,” the sculptural grey core that contains art storage. The exterior of the expansion echoes the surface appearance of the vault—as if this core had been exposed and “unveiled”—symbolically expressing The Broad’s commitment to access while playfully inverting the visual vocabulary of the current building. Inside the addition, there will be large new galleries on the first, second, and third floors, as well as second-floor spaces in which visitors will be able to move among racks filled with artworks from the collection, creating a zone that serves simultaneously as gallery and art storage.

Joanne Heyler commented, “In the brief period since 2015, our building has become an icon in Los Angeles’s cultural and civic landscape. With this expansion, we intend to amplify The Broad’s commitment to access for all to contemporary art, offering surprising, welcoming, and imaginative experiences that honor the diversity of our public and add to the ever-growing vitality of Grand Avenue, the area that Eli Broad believed in so strongly and that he helped transform into what it is today.”

The new building—which will break ground within The Broad’s first decade—will reinforce the open, inventive, and welcoming qualities for which the museum is known, while adding entirely new facets for visitors to discover. The expansion offers:

–Space to dramatically increase the number of collection artworks on view. The expansion’s 55,000 square feet of new construction increases The Broad’s galleries by 70% and allows visitors to see more of the museum’s growing collection, including its uniquely deep and extensive single-artist holdings.

–Two top-floor, open-air courtyards where visitors can gather, relax, and enjoy art outdoors.

–Flexible live programming space where the public will encounter boundary-breaking performances, concerts, or multimedia installations, or participate in a family weekend workshop or school program.

–A new experience of the art storage vault that invites visitors into a room with painting racks, allowing unexpected themes to emerge as various works are pulled out from visit to visit.

The Broad collection comprises more than 2,000 artworks from the 1950s to today and is well known for its large number of influential artists whose work is held in career-spanning depth, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Roy Lichtenstein, Takashi Murakami, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, and many others. As the collection grows, it increasingly includes artists and perspectives that were historically left out of the canon and the art market, while building on existing strengths in American Pop art and socially and politically themed works across painting, sculpture, new media, and installation. Artists recently added to the collection include Katherine Bernhardt, Lauren Halsey, David Hammons, Patrick Martinez, Sabine Moritz, Martin Puryear, Amy Sherald, Cauleen Smith, Mickalene Thomas, and Hank Willis Thomas, among others.

The Broad was built to reach the widest possible audience—and through a redefined approach to visitor engagement as well as free general admission, the museum has created a warm and inviting environment where all members of the public can feel welcomed. While maintaining a commitment to rigorous scholarship and intellectual exploration through ambitious special exhibitions and live programs, The Broad aims to heighten this distinctive feeling of openness and belonging, extending it everywhere throughout the addition.

Edythe Broad said, “With Joanne Heyler’s skilled leadership, The Broad museum has exceeded the expectations I shared with my late husband Eli, and it is time to set the museum on course for the future. The design for our expansion by Elizabeth Diller and DS+R creates new, beautiful spaces for art while preserving what already makes a visit to The Broad so special. I can’t imagine anyone else doing as good a job or caring quite as much.”

Designs for the expansion preserve the ethos of the original building, taking care to activate every space, especially those transitional areas connecting galleries and floors, adding a sense of choreography, purpose, and narrative to the visitor’s journey through the art on view.

“I think of the new building as a companion to the existing Broad,” said Elizabeth Diller. “The pair shares DNA, but each has its own distinct character and purpose in constant dialogue with its counterpart. The original Broad was conceived as an unfolding experience starting in the lobby, traveling up the escalator piercing the vault, landing in the third-floor gallery immersed in the collection, then snaking down through collection storage on the way back to the street. The challenge of adding more space to the building was to retain this intuitive circulation and logic while introducing a set of completely new experiences for the visitor.”

Outside, a new covered plaza will greet Metro riders entering from the Grand Avenue Arts / Bunker Hill station. Named after Los Angeles County’s First District Supervisor, the Hilda Solis Plaza creates a gateway from public transit to the vibrant arts corridor, businesses, residences, hotels, and dining on Grand Avenue.

“This expansion marks another exciting step forward, as cultural organizations come together to build the fabric of Grand Avenue and a greater LA County,” said Supervisor Solis. “The Broad has contributed to making art more equitable and accessible to all through its free general admission, inclusive atmosphere, and robust school programs that inspire the current and next generations of creative thinkers and artists. The new publicly accessible Solis Plaza and expanded Broad will be true points of connection, bridging the Metro Regional Connector to Downtown Los Angeles and ensuring all communities feel welcome.”

The Broad will break ground on the expansion in early 2025 during its tenth-anniversary year and will remain open during construction. The new building will open to the public before Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Summer Olympics. General admission will continue to be free.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said, “The Broad is a hub that contributes to the cultural and economic vitality of Downtown Los Angeles, welcoming visitors from all corners of our city and around the world. This expansion will help make the arts more readily available to all who visit Downtown, and help shape Grand Avenue into an even more inclusive, world-class arts destination.”

To celebrate the expansion plans and share additional design insights, The Broad will present a conversation between Joanne Heyler and Elizabeth Diller this summer. Details of the program will be announced in the coming weeks.

About The Broad
The Broad’s mission is to make contemporary art accessible to the widest possible audience. Founded in 2015 on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, the museum offers free general admission and presents an active program of special exhibitions and innovative live events, all within a landmark building designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler. The Broad is home to the Broad collection, one of the world’s leading collections of postwar and contemporary art, which continues to grow as new artists and artworks are added. The museum is the headquarters of The Broad Art Foundation’s worldwide lending library, which has been loaning collection works to museums around the world since 1984. To create greater public access, The Broad will break ground on a 55,000 square-foot expansion in early 2025.