Broad confirms our report on museum shortlist

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Eli Broad has issued a statement confirming our report on the architectural competition he has organized for a proposed museum on Grand Avenue.

The list, as we noted, is heavy on bold-faced names. Four of the contenders -- Rem Koolhaas, Christian de Portzamparc, the Swiss pair Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and the Japanese firm SANAA -- are winners of the Pritzker Prize, the field’s top honor. (SANAA just picked up its Pritzker a week ago.) The other two -- New York’s Diller, Scofidio & Renfro and London’s Foreign Office Architects -- are far from unknowns.

Broad is hoping to build a museum for his collection of postwar and contemporary art on a city-owned site that was originally part of the Grand Avenue development project. He envisions a building with roughly 40,000 square feet of exhibition space that would also contain offices for his Broad Art Foundation.

Here is Broad’s statement in full:

‘In the interest of being able to start construction as quickly as possible on the Broad Collections museum and headquarters for the Broad Art Foundation once we make a decision on a location and once approvals are secured, we have conducted a private architectural competition with the following firms:

‘Foreign Office Architects
Diller Scofidio Renfro
Rem Koolhaas/OMA
SANAA
Christian de Portzamparc
Herzog & de Meuron

‘We look forward to making a decision on both the site and the architect later this spring.’

--Christopher Hawthorne