The Broad


The Broad is a contemporary art museum on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles. The museum is named for philanthropist Eli Broad, who financed the $140 million building which houses the Broad art collections. The museum offers free general admission to its permanent collection galleries.

The Broad is housed in a new building designed by architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro and structural engineering firm Leslie E. Robertson Associates. With a location adjacent to Frank Gehry's iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall, the museum's design is intended to contrast with its bright metallic perforated exterior while respecting its architectural presence by having a porous, "honeycomblike" exterior. The building design is based on a concept entitled “the veil and the vault”. “The veil” is a porous envelope that wraps the whole building, filtering and transmitting daylight to the indoor space. This skin is made of 2,500 rhomboidal panels made in fiberglass reinforced concrete supported by a 650-ton steel substructure. “The vault” is a concrete body which forms the core of the building, dedicated to artworks storage, laboratories, curatorial spaces and offices.

The three-story museum features 50,000 square feet of exhibition space on two floors, with 35,000 square feet of column-free gallery space on the third floor and 15,000 square feet more on the first. The roof has 318 skylight monitors that let in diffused sunlight from the north. In the non-Euclidean lobby, there is no front desk; instead, visitor-services associates greet guests with mobile devices. Lobby and exhibitions spaces are connected by a 105-foot escalator and a glass-enclosed elevator.