If you’ve gotten off at the brand-new Metro stop right behind the Broad, you might’ve noticed that the Downtown museum’s parking garage has a whole lot of empty space on top of it. Well, it turns out that was being set aside for some pretty major plans.
The Broad announced on Wednesday that it’ll be building an expansion right behind the existing museum. The Hope Street-facing structure will feature three floors of new gallery space as well as two open-air courtyards. The museum will break ground on its expansion by early 2025 and expects it to be open before the 2028 Olympics.
Before we dive into the details, to answer what might be your most pressing question: Yes, the museum will continue to be free to access, and it’ll remain open during construction, too. There’ll be a whole lot more art to see, too, once it’s done, with 55,000 square feet of new gallery space, a 70% increase over the museum’s existing footprint. The Grand Avenue institution is already stocked with works from contemporary art stars like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons and Barbara Kruger, but the Broad says this expansion will provide space to focus on comparatively more overlooked artists and movements, as well.
Design studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro helmed the museum’s initial plans, and they’ll be tackling the expansion, too. The “veil and vault” concept of the original building—that is, the recognizable white honeycomb-like “veil” over the gray structural “vault”—will continue here with a sort of inside-out-looking extension that represents an “unveiled” addition.
Visitors who approach from the Metro station side of the museum will now be greeted by the covered Hilda Solis Plaza. But don’t worry: The long escalator the squeezes out onto the third floor will continue to be the galleries’ main point of entry. Speaking of navigating floors, if you’ve ever been enticed by the peekaboo window in the museum’s staircase that lets you gaze into its off-view collections, the expansion will allow you to stroll among these racks of paintings housed inside the vault. The Broad also boasts that it’ll have more space for performances, workshops and school programs.
“In the brief period since 2015, our building has become an icon in Los Angeles’s cultural and civic landscape,” said founding director Joanne Heyler 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, the area that Eli Broad believed in so strongly and that he helped transform into what it is today.”