Nearly a decade into its existence (and roughly 5.5. million visitors later), The Broad, a perpetually buzzy contemporary art museum that has served as a key player in the ongoing cultural renaissance of Downtown Los Angeles, has announced a significant expansion project that will increase the amount of gallery space by 70 percent. Major museum additions are most often—but not exclusively—tackled by design teams differing from those who helmed the original building(s) and previous expansions, resulting in a hodgepodge of different architectural styles reflective of the different eras in which the commissions were completed. Considering that a short amount of time has passed since the museum’s September 2015 opening and the idiosyncratic nature of the museum’s “veil”-cloaked existing building, it’s only fitting that Diller Scofidio + Renfro, who received considerable acclaim for their work on The Broad, is returning for round two.
As announced by Broad leadership, the 55,000-square-foot expansion project with an estimated price tag of $100 million will break ground next year, tidily timed the museum’s tenth anniversary; work is slated to wrap up ahead of the 2028 Summer Games in L.A. The existing museum will remain open throughout the construction process and general admission will continue to be free. “In the brief period since 2015, our building has become an icon in Los Angeles’s cultural and civic landscape,” said Joanne Heyler, founding director of The Broad, in a statement. “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.”
. Exterior rendering of the existing and expanded Broad. Image courtesy of The Broad, © Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), rendering by Plomp
In addition to significantly expanding the museum’s available exhibition space across three levels, the expansion will include dedicated flexible programming area for performances, multimedia installations, and gatherings; a pair of open-air courtyards on the top floor; and a second-floor space described as a hybrid between a conventional gallery and open storage. Outside, a new covered plaza—named after L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis—will rise near the entrance to the Grand Avenue Arts/Bunker Hill Metro station.
The exterior of the expansion echoes that of DS+R’s original building, specifically its concrete “vault”—the core housing art storage, administrative offices, and curatorial spaces tucked within the structure’s porous, honeycomb-esque envelope. It is “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,” the museum explained.
Rendering of a future gallery in the expanded Broad, featuring artworks from the Broad collection (L to R, front gallery): Amy Sherald, Kingdom, 2022; Elliott Hundley, Changeling, 2020; Patrick Martinez, Migration is Natural, 2021, picture me rollin’, 2016, Psychic Friends (Malcolm X), 2022, and They Tried to Bury Us, They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds (Dinos Christianopoulos), 2022; (back gallery): Mark Bradford, Corner of Desire and Piety, 2008 and Helter Skelter I, 2007. Images courtesy the artists and The Broad, © Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R)
“I think of the new building as a companion to the existing Broad,” elaborated DS+R partner 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.”
DS+R’s scheme for the roughly 120,000-square-foot existing museum building was selected from a closely watched invited design competition, with shortlisted proposals coming from SANAA, OMA, Herzog & de Meuron, and others
Further details on the expansion and its design will be shared this summer during a public conversation between Diller and Heyler hosted by The Broad.
