Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and his wife on Thursday unveiled long-awaited plans for a new museum in downtown Los Angeles that will house their collection of contemporary art. The museum, called "The Broad," features a honeycombed shaped facade, glass-enclosed lobby and three floors to display various works in their 2,000-piece collection. "The Broad" was designed by New York-based architects Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, and will be situated near the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall. The cost is estimated at around $130 million, and it is planned to open in 2013 with works by luminaries of contemporary and modern art including Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Calling the concept the "veil and the vault," DS+R's design consists of a cast-concrete "veil" that wraps the building with a distinctive pattern and floods the interiors with that must-have for any museum: natural light. The second-story core of the building is the "vault" for the Broad Art Foundation, including Broad's massive collection -- over 2,000 works by 200 artists -- with windows that allow visitors to peek at the holdings as well as at the day-to-day operations of the foundation itself. The top floor features a completely sky-lit gallery that offers 24-foot ceilings and almost an acre of unobstructed gallery space.
