L.A. art patron donates to N.Y.

Edward R. Broida -- a Los Angeles real estate developer and contemporary art collector who has been closely allied with New York for many years and once planned to build his own museum there -- has given 174 pieces from his collection to the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

The donation, reportedly worth about $50 million, includes 36 works by Philip Guston, a rough-and-tumble painter who mixed brash figurative imagery with social satire, and 18 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints by Vija Celmins, known for transforming ordinary objects into intensely observed images of contemplation.

Broida, 71, who has cancer, made the gift as part of an effort to settle his estate. He consigned 14 other works to November auctions at Christie’s New York. Among pieces to be offered is “Homage to Matisse,” a 1954 work by Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko, expected to fetch $15 million to $20 million.

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-- Suzanne Muchnic