Building Support by Example

Eli Broad was buttoned-down and businesslike, as usual, as he ushered a visitor into the inner sanctum of his foundation’s offices on the 12th floor of a Westwood high-rise. He was ready to talk, at least a little, about his part in underwriting the new building for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“I expect to be a significant donor,” he said. Instead of naming a figure, he offered a clue: “Let me put it this way. It will be more than our family has ever given to any other building, by some margin.”

Broad’s promise means the museum’s radical plan to demolish four of its six buildings and replace them with a $200-million, tent-topped structure designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas is off and running.

The amount of his donation won’t be announced until the museum kicks off the public phase of its capital campaign, and that won’t begin until more than half of the money has been privately pledged--a process that could take up to a year. But Broad’s hint a few weeks ago indicates that his gift will top the $23 million his family has contributed to the Broad Center for the Biological Sciences, under construction at Caltech and designed by architect James Ingo Freed.

“Eli has given me something to work with,” the museum’s president and director, Andrea L. Rich, said last week. “I don’t think it’s the end of what he will do, but it’s a base of support that enables us to start setting up other partnerships and arrangements.”

Other trustees “have made commitments to make commitments,” she said. The campaign goal has not been set, but it probably will be around $300 million, including a big chunk for endowment, trustees say, which is currently $82 million.

Broad, who made his first millions in home building with the firm Kaufman & Broad, and the rest with SunAmerica, is widely considered to be L.A.’s wealthiest philanthropist. He’s credited with kick-starting the campaign to raise funds for the Walt Disney Concert Hall in 1997, when the project was stalled because of escalating costs, and is a well-known advocate of distinguished architecture.

He is also one of the world’s leading collectors of contemporary art, courted by dealers, curators and museum directors. Not incidentally, his collection is the subject of a major traveling exhibition that opened at LACMA in October.

Given all that, he might be expected to provide the lion’s share of the money for the museum’s transformation. But Rich contends that “several major partners” must be involved. “It wouldn’t be good for this project to be bankrolled by a single person,” she said. “Eli wouldn’t do it and shouldn’t. The museum is a public institution. I think it should be clear that this is a community project that is not led by or dependent upon a single donor.”

She wants to make clear that no one knows exactly how the proposed building will shape up, let alone who will foot the bill, but LACMA leaders are steaming ahead on “parallel tracks,” as she puts it.

First, Walter L. Weisman was asked to serve an unprecedented second term as chairman of the board. He and Rich are lining up other trustees to solicit major gifts during the campaign’s “quiet phase” and to guide the effort when it goes public. “It isn’t just me asking for gifts,” Rich said. “The trustees have to convince each other, then roll up their sleeves and ask colleagues to join them.”

At the same time, the museum is negotiating a contract with the architect, hiring a legal firm that specializes in architectural development and seeking a Southern California executive architect to work with the Koolhaas team.

Fund-raising must keep pace with the building project, Rich emphasized. But if all goes well, the process will take from five to seven years, with construction likely to begin in about two years.

LACMA--which derives about one-third of its $40.5-million annual operating budget from the county--began developing its plans for expansion and redesign with a $10-million county grant issued two years ago to analyze the museum’s physical problems, facilitate improvements and increase public access.

“That’s extremely valuable money because it’s hard to raise funds for those things. You can’t get going without it,” Rich said, adding that the remaining grant money will be used for design development, but all construction funds will be raised from private sources.

As for skepticism about raising money in an economic downturn, “we are always in a recession or a boom; that’s the way the economy works,” Rich said. “In a public institution, you just keep plugging along in the boom time and the down time. It averages out.”

“This is not the best time,” Broad said, “but hopefully the recession will be over before the end of this year. People can give to LACMA over five years, and they don’t even have to make the first payment until next year.” Besides, he said, “if you look at the Forbes 400 list, there are more people on it in Southern California than there are in New York.” (He ranks 26th on the current list, published in 2001.)

Broad contends that the resolution of the Disney Concert Hall debacle bodes well--not ill--for the museum. “You have to remember that we were able to raise over $200 million for a symphony hall that many people considered dead and ready to be buried, or a black hole,” he said. “Times were better then, admittedly, but we did it.”

Still, the specter of spiraling costs there and in other large construction projects looms large at LACMA. “This institution does not have deep pockets,” Rich said. “LACMA can’t afford major mistakes that would draw on its operating budget. It’s my job to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

To that end, plans submitted by the five architect finalists were subject to review by architecture, construction and engineering firms that provided their services to the museum without charge, Rich said. “In some cases, two or three firms looked at plans, and we compared their cost estimates. The two finalists, Jean Nouvel and Rem Koolhaas, came back and met with our outside pro bono consultants. Each of them argued about their differences with our consultants, in our presence.”

The contract under negotiation now between Koolhaas and the museum is further insurance, Rich said. The goal is to codify “a working relationship that guarantees both the creative output and the fiscal responsibility,” Rich said. In all aspects of the building process, it’s essential to “draw up agreements early on, to avoid misunderstandings later,” she added.

During the 18- to 24-month design development phase, Koolhaas will work out details of the plan and the local executive architect will make drawings to be used for construction. A construction firm will analyze the drawings throughout the process, Rich said.

While the superstructure of the new building has been established, a great deal of discussion and planning will be needed to determine the shape, look and flow of the galleries and installation of the art. “This is an ego-less design,” she said, noting that Koolhaas has suggested bringing in other architects to design some of the galleries.

But perhaps the major component of Koolhaas’ plan for the interior is the concept of change, she said. “This is the opposite of a museum where everything is classified and set forever according to certain rules. This is a design built on the one thing we know for certain, which is that things change.”

Exciting as that may be for the museum’s staff and visitors, it presents problems in terms of recognizing donors. “You could put a plaque on a wall, but the wall may move,” as Rich puts it.

“Finding appropriate ways of acknowledging founders and new contributors in a dynamic environment is going to be a challenge, but a fun one,” she said. “I think people will buy into this not just to have their names on the walls, but to be part of something that is unique and aimed at addressing the future.”

Rich and LACMA’s trustees say they selected Koolhaas’ audacious design because it is cheaper and more practical, flexible and coherent than his competitors’ relatively conservative plans. But LACMA’s leaders are also banking on the appeal of a bold transformation.

“People gave to Disney Hall because they became convinced that it could become a symbol of the city, like the Opera House in Sydney, Australia, or the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain,” Broad said. “This will have the same attraction.”

Not everyone is convinced that tearing down the old buildings or spending $200 million on a new one is a good idea. Individual phone calls and letters to the museum, the county Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles Conservancy and the press have criticized L.A.’s tear-down mentality, or suggested the city needs better art more than a better building.

But the surprise is that, so far, there is no organized or concerted opposition to the plan.

“I’m still scratching my head about that,” said Rich, who was expecting a backlash. “I think the building has been an embarrassment. Our strategic edge is the mistakes that were made in the past. If we had a historic landmark, we couldn’t even think about doing this. But this is L.A. We can do it.”