Broad challenges LACMA’s offer to merge with MOCA

Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad on Wednesday fired a shot back at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s proposal to merge with L.A.’s financially threatened Museum of Contemporary Art.

“The answer is like in the movie: ‘Show us the money,’ ” said Broad, who has his own bailout proposal for MOCA on the table, from San Francisco, where he’d just announced a $25-million Broad Foundation grant for stem cell research.

The question, he said, is which bailout carries a guarantee of secure funding for MOCA’s exhibitions and operations: his $30-million offer or LACMA’s proposal, to which no price tag has been publicly attached.

With more than $2 billion in the Broad Foundation coffers -- even after taking what Broad says has been a 16% hit since the start of 2008 -- he thinks that MOCA leaders can take his money to the bank.

He has previously broken down the financial details: MOCA would have to match the first $15 million with fundraising of its own, with the combined $30 million replenishing a withered endowment. Then Broad would donate another $15 million over three years to help fund MOCA’s art exhibitions.

On Wednesday, LACMA Director Michael Govan wouldn’t name an amount needed to float the merger proposal, which would rely on fundraising and savings from joint, streamlined business operations. Instead, he laid out an argument that could be summed up with a different familiar phrase: The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Govan predicted that a LACMA-MOCA tandem would be a stronger fundraising combination than each museum going it alone, resulting in a bigger slice of the pie for both.

“People love to support things that have quality and are sustainable, and they will give more money if something has great quality and is sustainable,” Govan said. LACMA, which so far has enjoyed solid fundraising successes as it carries out a multi-phase expansion and renovation, and which has a pipeline to public funding that MOCA lacks, presumably would bring the lion’s share of the sustainability to the table.

Specifics, such as how many of MOCA’s curators and others on its 94-member staff would keep their jobs in a merger, would be worked out by the two museum boards, Govan said.

Strong curators would be vital to achieving the goal of an “internationally distinctive” MOCA, Govan said, but “do you need an internationally distinctive MOCA accounting department? No.”

The quality of MOCA’s collection and exhibitions has won it renown. But its inability to fund its ambitious programs on a sustainable level since 2000 has put it in a bind. With reserves dwindling steadily over a decade, MOCA’s problems went from chronic to critical when the world financial mess hit. The second board meeting this week is scheduled for today in hopes of choosing between the two rescue plans.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Govan presented LACMA’s merger plan. Broad said he’ll attend today’s meeting at the MOCA board’s invitation and answer any questions about his offer.

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mike.boehm@latimes.com