Beverly Hills pulls out of the running for Eli Broad's art museum [Updated]

It now looks as if the museum Eli Broad wants to build to house his 2,000-piece contemporary art collection is going to land in Santa Monica or at Grand Avenue and 2nd Street in downtown Los Angeles, literally a stone's throw from Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Culture Monster received this notice of surrender just now from a city spokeswoman in Beverly Hills, saying the city has "other project priorities" for its money than buying Broad a site for his museum.

"The Beverly Hills City Council has confirmed that it has concluded discussions with The Broad Art Foundation regarding the potential site of a museum at the intersection of Wilshire Blvd. and Santa Monica Blvd. As part of upcoming discussions on the adoption of the City’s fiscal year 2010-2011 budget, the Council will be reallocating to other project priorities the funds it had set aside for the potential acquisition of the property," the press release said.

"In a letter to Eli Broad, Beverly Hills City Manager Jeff Kolin said, 'While our City Council remains convinced that Beverly Hills offers an attractive location for your renowned art collection, we understand that The Broad Art Foundation is now considering other locations.'

"Kolin went on to say that should alternate sites not come to fruition, the City remained open to further partnership discussions."

We'll check with Broad or his art foundation minions in a moment and let you know what they have to add.

[Update, 6:15 p.m.] Broad has said the point of having multiple irons in the fire for his museum site is that competition between municipalities would ensure that bureaucratic red tape is minimized and planning moves ahead swiftly. Will Beverly Hills' dropping out increase the chances that the Santa Monica City Council and officials in charge of L.A.'s Grand Avenue Project could draw out the process and drive harder bargains because there's less competition to worry about?

"We're still interested in an expeditious process and decision," said Karen Denne, spokeswoman for the Broad Art Foundation. "All three locations had challenges, but we've still got two viable options." She said Broad still expects to decide the museum site by the end of spring.

— Mike Boehm

Related

Santa Monica still pursuing Eli Broad's museum

Photo: Eli Broad. Photo credit: Los Angeles Times

Broad set to choose Grand Avenue?

The Architect's Newspaper is reporting that Eli Broad, who has been shopping for a location for a museum to hold his Broad Art Foundation's collection of post-war and contemporary art, will choose a site on Grand Avenue that is part of developer Related Cos.' stalled Grand Avenue project. The site is across Grand from the Colburn School of Performing Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art and across 2nd Street from Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The report should be taken with a significant grain of salt, since it relies on a single -- and hardly disinterested -- source: Martha Welborne, managing director of the Grand Avenue Committee. A spokesperson for Broad tells the publication that no decision has been made. Broad has seemed to be playing contending sites -- notably parcels in Santa Monica and Beverly Hills -- against one another all along as he shops for an attractive deal. His interest in the fate of Grand Avenue, of course, is well known. The new director of MOCA, Jeffrey Deitch, has reportedly been pitching the Grand Avenue site to Broad, founding chairman of the museum in 1979 and more recently one of its financial saviors.

Welborne joined the architecture firm Zimmer Gunsul Frasca at the beginning of the year, while continuing her work for the Grand Avenue Committee.

-- Christopher Hawthorne

Above: Eli Broad, right, and Jeffrey Deitch, left, in January at MOCA. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Downtown L.A. is officially a contender for Eli Broad's art museum

Here's the latest installment in the courtship of Eli Broad -- and the art museum he aims to plunk somewhere in the Los Angeles Basin, complete with big-name architecture, a spiffy $200 million endowment and the 2,000 works of contemporary art held by his Broad Art Foundation.

Downtown L.A. is officially making a play, courtesy of the Grand Avenue Authority, which today authorized negotiations with Broad toward a possible deal that would wrest the museum from Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, which are also in the running.

After a closed session today of the Grand Avenue Authority, L.A. City Councilwoman Jan Perry, a member of the joint city-county authority that's overseeing development of vacant land and parking lots in the heart of downtown's arts district, said it will deploy a negotiating team "to proceed with discussions with the Broad Foundation to consider his proposal and reach a mutual agreement."

The Grand Avenue project, of which Broad himself has been a leading advocate, is considered the centerpiece of downtown's revitalization. Designed by Frank Gehry, it includes two towers, condos, hotel rooms and a shopping center. The project, which involves public land and a private developer, stalled last year after the developer was unable to secure a multibillion-dollar construction loan amid the global credit crunch. A Broad Museum launch there would be a coup that could help rebuild momentum for the plan.

Bonds to rescue L.A. Opera offer a nice return, but you can't invest

Given Tuesday’s news that Los Angeles County will issue $14 million in bonds as a loan to the cash-starved Los Angeles Opera,   some L.A. Opera fans might be wondering whether this could be an opportunity to do well by doing good.

Invest in a bond that helps tide the opera over while it solidifies its finances and pays down about $20 million in debt, and bank some attractive interest as your reward. At an interest rate of almost 5%, that’s a heck of a lot better than you can get from a certificate of deposit or a U.S. Treasury bond. 

If that sounds too good to be true, well, it is. The bonds are a “private placement,” and the deal will work like this: On Friday, the Los Angeles County Public Works Financing Authority will issue the bonds. Banc of America Leasing & Capital LLC, will buy them all for $14 million, and the county will pass the bank’s cash along to the opera on the same day.

Twice a year for the bonds’ three-year term, the opera will fork over interest at a pre-arranged rate of 4.7%, and the county will pass it along to Banc of America. The interest will total a tad less than $2 million. The principal will be paid in a single lump sum at the beginning of 2013.

UPDATED: L.A. Opera gets $14-million emergency loan

Los Angeles Opera asked for and received a $14-million emergency loan from Los Angeles County today to allow it to stay afloat and keep paying its expenses through the middle of next year.

UPDATED: CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL STORY IN TODAY'S TIMES

The county Board of Supervisors approved the request by a vote of 4 to 1, with the dissenting vote coming from Mike Antonovich, who last July tried to short-circuit the opera’s upcoming Ring Festival on the grounds that it glorified an anti-Semitic composer, Richard Wagner, who had influenced Adolf Hitler. The festival is anchored by the Opera's $32-million "Ring" cycle, the performance of Wagner's four-opera "Der Ring des Nibelungen."

Stephen Rountree, chief executive of the Music Center and chief operating officer for L.A. Opera, appealed to the board for the loan, which will come from a pool of county bond money.

The loan “is needed now, literally next week,” Rountree told supervisors.

Zev Yaroslavsky, the board’s leading arts advocate, said the risk would be “very nominal, very minimal” and that letting the opera go under was unthinkable.

“It’s an important artistic organization for our county,” Yaroslavsky said. “For all they have built up ... this is almost no price for us to pay. We’ll make money on the interest rate, and we’ll save the opera. I’m not happy that we’re in this situation, but what’s our choice? This is one of our major tenants at the Music Center. This could set off a chain of events that takes down the Music Center.”

MOCA's biggest exhibition to celebrate 30th anniversary -- and survival

L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art is getting ready to throw a two-pronged celebration this weekend, centered around a Saturday gala at which pop star Lady Gaga will do a one-off performance with dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet, and, the next day, the opening of the largest exhibition in MOCA's history, drawn almost entirely from its own collection. For the full story on MOCA, its issues and its art, click here.

One reason to party is the 30th anniversary of MOCA's founding in 1979, when a group of contemporary art lovers won the support of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and began planning for a major museum devoted to the art of the present and the post-World War II past. Aficionados of contemporary art in LA. had felt disenfranchised by the 1974 failure of its main previous outlet, the Pasadena Art Museum, which was bailed out by collector Norton Simon and merged with his collection into the wider-ranging Norton Simon Museum of Art.

MOCA's initial venue, now called the Geffen Contemporary, opened in a former city auto repair shop in Little Tokyo, followed in 1986 by the museum's Grand Avenue headquarters. The exhibition "Collection: MOCA's First 30 Years" will occupy all of the Grand Avenue building and half of the Geffen Contemporary, with a single one-day admission covering both venues. The show, featuring about 500 artworks including paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography and video and installation art, will run through May 3.

The other reason to celebrate is that MOCA is still here to celebrate, and no longer in apparent financial jeopardy, a year after it publicly declared a state of financial emergency. As much as arts institutions relish being front page news, they don't want the headline to be "L.A.'s MOCA in Deep Financial Trouble," as it was in The Times last Nov. 19.

More than a month of drama and brinkmanship followed, with MOCA's board eventually choosing a $30-million bailout offer from Eli Broad (one of those 1979 founders) over a proposal from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to take MOCA under its umbrella in a way promised to preserve MOCA's separate identity.

MOCA officials say that on top of Broad's bailout, they've raised $30 million in gifts and pledges over the past year, mostly from museum board members -- and that the gala is expected to bring in $2 million. On a more chastening note, "MOCA New," as the chapter kicking off this weekend has been dubbed, is also at the moment "MOCA less," with spending and staff reduced 25%, and just one exhibition other than the 30th anniversary retrospective currently announced for the two downtown venues.

-- Mike Boehm

Photo: MOCA's chief curator, Paul Schimmel, stands in a gallery displaying Mark Rothko paintings. Credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times

Related:

MOCA faces serious financial problems

MOCA accepts Eli Broad's $30 million lifeline, appoints CEO

MOCA cuts staff and exhibitions to balance its 2009 budget

MOCA has gifts, officers and trustees; pronounces finances fixed

Music review: L.A. Phil embraces a new generation with Dudamel

 
Oct. 8, 2009, is not the date of a revolution in music. The day marks not even the dawn of a new era. What the Gustavo Dudamel gala Thursday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall did mean for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, however, was an embrace of a new generation and cultural point of view, which is no small thing.

Dudamel’s first concert in the hall as the orchestra’s new music director was, of course, hoopla heaven. Movie stars materialized out of wherever it is they materialize. Grand Avenue became a South American party parish for the night. During the concert, the Disney stage was beset by video cameras, documenting the occasion for broadcast in the U.S. on PBS, and also across Europe, South America and Africa. Glittering confetti, a Disney opening night tradition, made the final ovations literally sparkle.
  
But for all the publicity about the new 28-year-old Venezuelan music director and the freshness he brings to a supposedly staid classical music, the most extraordinary aspect of the program itself was just how much it represented business as usual for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. After 17 years under the directorship of Esa-Pekka Salonen, the orchestra had earned the trust of its audience.
 
No musical lollipops were on offer Thursday.  No Yo-Yo Ma, Renee Fleming or other A-list soloist was employed to glamorize the stage. To begin the program, Dudamel walked up to the podium, acknowledged the tremendous applause with a happy smile and then fearlessly launched into the world premiere of John Adams’ 35-minute “City Noir.” 

Bike bells will be ringing as part of Monday Evening Concerts series

Wagner's "Ring" cycle may be vying with Dudamania as the headline maker of the musical season on Grand Avenue, but please take note that downtown's main drag of the arts will also be playing host to a horde of cyclists, ringing.

The musical piece in question is "Eine Brise: Transient Action for 111 Cyclists," by the late Argentinian composer Mauricio Kagel, which will have its L.A. premiere Feb. 22 outdoors on Grand Avenue's pavement. Kagel's quickie composition, no more than two minutes long, calls for 111 bicycle riders to ring their bells, whistle and emit vocalized effects in unison, on command.

The performance is part of the just-announced 2009-10 season from the experimental and contemporary music series Monday Evening Concerts. Along with the biker ensemble, its "Celebrating Kagel" concert will offer two pieces played indoors in the series' regular quarters, Zipper Concert Hall at the Colburn School.

The four other programs are "Sciarrino's Perfection" (Dec. 7), including the L.A. debut of flutist Mario Caroli; a "Mostly Californian" concert (Jan. 11) of recent pieces by current Golden Staters, plus Milton Babbitt and Anton Webern; "Shattered Shadows" (March 8) with works by Frank Denyer, Alvin Lucier and James Tenney; and "In the Dark" (April 19-20), which, true to its name, will feature the JACK Quartet in its L.A. debut, playing Georg Friedrich Haas' Third String Quartet in total darkness -- not at Zipper Hall, where safety codes won't allow music-making sans lighting, but at the Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church of Pasadena.

Monster Mash: Breaking news and headlines

-- Los Angeles' downtown Civic Center park plans begin to take shape. Architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne assesses the design.

-- List of world's billionaires shrinks; Eli Broad   checks in at No. 93 with a net worth of $5.2 billion (down $1.5 billion).

-- Opening of Crystal Bridges, the art museum backed by Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton, may be delayed.

-- Geffen Playhouse postpones "Nightmare Alley" and replaces it with "Farragut North," starring Chris Noth ("Sex and the City") and Chris Pine ("Star Trek").

-- The Art Institute of Chicago raises admission price to $18, a 50% increase.

-- The Associated Press countersues "Hope" artist Shepard Fairey.

-- National Symphony Orchestra to tour China and South Korea.

-- L.A. Philharmonic among five orchestras selected for residencies at London's Barbican Centre.   

-- Facing budget shortfall, Nevada Ballet Theatre cuts the number of dancers.

-- New season at Chicago's Goodman Theatre includes Philip Seymour Hoffman and Brian Dennehy.

-- Billionaire philanthropist Leonore Annenberg dies at 91.

-- Lisa Fung

Monster Mash: Breaking news and headlines

-- Google Earth to unveil program to zoom in on fine details of masterpieces at Spain's Prado museum, including Hieronymus Bosch's 16th century triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights," above.

-- Coosje van Bruggen, art historian and wife of Claes Oldenburg, dies at 66.

-- Getty researchers discover new way to date photographs.

-- James Gandolfini, left, to make his Broadway debut in Yasmina Reza's "God of Carnage," with Jeff Daniels, Marcia Gay Haden and Hope Davis.

-- National Portrait Gallery acts to correct wall label on President Bush's official portrait.

-- Tom O'Horgan, director of such Broadway hits as "Hair" and "Jesus Christ Superstar," dies at 84.

-- France's museums and monuments to offer free admission to visitors under 25.

-- Groundbreaking deadline looms for Grand Avenue project.

-- "We're not deaccessioning because we have to pay some bill on another painting," says Michael Govan, Los Angeles County Museum of Art director, of plans to auction two artworks. 

-- New York Philharmonic to perform in Hanoi, Abu Dhabi.

-- Another L.A. publication axes its theater arts critic and writer.

-- Settlement reached over last nude photos of Marilyn Monroe.

-- Lisa Fung

Photo credits: Top, Prado museum; bottom, Associated Press