the broad reveals expansion plans by diller scofidio + renfro

Diller Scofidio + Renfro return for the broad expansion

The Broad announces plans for an expansion led by the building’s original architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R). In addition to doubling the museum’s gallery space and enhancing access to its growing collection, the new building will provide flexibility for live programming and enable the public to move among artwork storage racks for the first time, getting continually new perspectives on the collection. Founded in 2015 with a mandate from philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad to build a large audience for contemporary art, the museum has far exceeded its own projections, having welcomed more than 5.5 million visitors to date and now regularly attracting nearly four times more visitors than originally envisioned.

exterior rendering of future Broad expansion from Hope Street | courtesy The Broad | © Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) | rendering by Plomp

hosting the growing collection and new visitor experiences

The expansion, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), opens a new perspective on the ‘veil and vault’ concept they introduced in 2015, with the building’s iconic white honeycomb ‘veil’ enveloping the ‘vault,’ the sculptural grey core that contains art storage. The new exterior echoes the surface appearance of the vault—as if this core had been exposed — symbolically expressing The Broad’s commitment to access while playfully inverting the visual vocabulary of the current building. The 5,109 sqm of new construction increases The Broad’s galleries by 70% and allows visitors to see more of the museum’s growing collection, including its uniquely deep and extensive single-artist holdings.

These large new galleries will take over the first, second, and third floors, as well as second-floor spaces in which visitors will be able to move among racks filled with artworks from the collection, creating a zone that serves simultaneously as gallery and art storage. Meanwhile, two top-floor, open-air courtyards invite visitors to gather, relax, and enjoy art outdoors, and a flexible live programming space gets the public to encounter boundary-breaking performances, concerts, or multimedia installations, or participate in a family weekend workshop or school program.

exterior rendering of existing and expanded Broad | courtesy The Broad | © Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) | rendering by Plomp

Outside, a new covered plaza will greet metro riders entering from the Grand Avenue Arts /Bunker Hill station. Named after Los Angeles County’s First District Supervisor, the Hilda Solis Plaza creates a gateway from public transit to the vibrant arts corridor, businesses, residences, hotels, and dining on Grand Avenue.   The Broad will break ground on the expansion in early 2025 during its tenth-anniversary and will remain open during construction. The new building will open to the public before Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Summer Olympics. General admission will continue to be free.   To celebrate the expansion plans and share additional design insights, The Broad will present a conversation between its founding director, Joanne Heyler, and Elizabeth Diller this summer. Details of the program will be announced in the coming weeks.

The Broad collection comprises more than 2,000 artworks from the 1950s to today and is well known for its large number of influential artists whose work is held in career-spanning depth, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Roy Lichtenstein, Takashi Murakami, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, and many others. As the collection grows, it increasingly includes artists and perspectives that were historically left out of the canon and the art market, while building on existing strengths in American Pop art and socially and politically themed works across painting, sculpture, new media, and installation. Artists recently added to the collection include Katherine Bernhardt, Lauren Halsey, David Hammons, Patrick Martinez, Sabine Moritz, Martin Puryear, Amy Sherald, Cauleen Smith, Mickalene Thomas, and Hank Willis Thomas, among others.  

rendering of future gallery, featuring artworks from the Broad collection (L to R, front gallery): Amy Sherald, Kingdom, 2022; Elliott Hundley, Changeling, 2020; Patrick Martinez, Migration is Natural, 2021, picture me rollin’, 2016, Psychic Friends (Malcolm X), 2022, and They Tried to Bury Us, They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds (Dinos Christianopoulos), 2022; (back gallery): Mark Bradford, Corner of Desire and Piety, 2008 and Helter Skelter I, 2007 | courtesy the artists and The Broad | © Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R)