So the art world was taken aback last month when, on the eve of the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, a $56 million addition to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for which he chose the architect and paid the bill, Mr. Broad abruptly seemed to undermine his own cause.

Rather than pledge to donate his extensive collection of contemporary art to the new institution — a move that some viewed as inevitable, given that his name was to be on the door — Mr. Broad said he had decided instead to keep it in his private foundation. Far better, he argued, to lend the 2,000-odd works to museums around the world than to risk their being largely relegated to storage in Los Angeles. (New York Times 2/10/08)

Two things to pay attention to here:

First, it cost the LACMA only $56M for the expansion–and that by a top-tier architect (designer of the Menil Collection, the Art Institute expansion, etc.). Compare this to the $125M figure that has been thrown around for an Elgin concert hall.

Second, note that art owners lend their art works to museums, which means we don’t need to have a permanent collection in order to have an art museum. There are many museums in this country that do not have permanent collections. One such museum is St. Louis’s contemporary art museum, recently finished on a tight budget of $6.5M, something we can easily manage in Elgin.

The St. Louis museum:

Filed under: arts, downtown.
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