Downtown LA Welcomes The Broad: A New, Free Contemporary Art Museum

The Downtown LA landscape just got a shiny new addition in the form of a 120,000-square-foot contemporary art museum. The city’s latest contemporary art access point, The Broad, is brought to you by your friendly neighborhood philanthropists, art collectors and billionaire couple, Eli and Edythe Broad.

Anticipation for the museum has been apparent for several months now, but was solidified last week when the museum’s online reservation system crashed within the first 24 hours of it going live. Obviously, frugal art enthusiasts of LA are really psyched to check out original works from contemporary taste-makers such as Basquiat, Keith Haring, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons and more.

Located on the corner of Grand Avenue and Second Street, the bare bones of The Broad are gaining nearly as much attention as the art showcased inside. Created by design firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the museum stands three floors tall with a spookily chic architectural design scheme— almost as if Gotham City had a white wall gallery.

Upon entrance, museum attendees can expect to travel up a 105-foot escalator through the heart of the building’s cave-like interior. Attendees then emerge in the museum’s third-floor gallery space amidst a large open floor plan, 23-foot high ceilings and 318 skylights filtering in diffused light. Public exhibition space is designated to floors one and three, while the second floor, lovingly referred to as “The Vault,” discretely houses the museums 2,000+ piece art collection.  19 gallery spaces make up the buildings third floor, each sorted chronologically from the Sixties to 2000. Several of the 19 galleries will interchangeably focus on a single artists and their extensive careers— such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Takashi Murakami. Other galleries on the floor, however, will collate artists by era such as Cold War art or New York in the Eighties.

The first floor accommodations of the Broad aren’t too shabby either, as the area will host its own slew of experimental and creative functions; case in point, Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room, a featured piece in the museums inaugural installation. With general admission to the Broad Art Museum coming in at a pleasant total of $0.00, there’s no reason every contemporary art lover shouldn’t make a visit to the city’s latest access point. There will literally be 100-year-old olive trees in the space’s outdoor plaza; when else are you going to make it a point to take your date to go see some crazy, obscure Neo Rauch or Eric Fischl paintings and a grove of century old olive trees? Now, the time is now young Angeleno.

The Broad will open its doors beginning Sept. 20. Reserve free tickets here.