Eli Broad Plays the Field

Maybe contemporary collector and art-museum philanthropist Eli Broad thought he was sufficiently out of earshot from his neighbors in Los Angeles when he chatted in London with Bloomberg’s Linda Sandler:
Asked whether his collection would wind up in a museum, Broad said it would be divided and doled out to institutions that needed the specific works. The risk of donating an entire collection to a single museum was that much of it might wind up in storage, he said.
“Where it goes will depend on who needs what. We don’t want them in storage.” Giving a clue as to possible beneficiaries, Broad reeled off a number of boards he sits on, including MOCA [the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art]. LACMA [the Los Angeles Museum of Art] would be loaned more than 100 works, he said.
But a “loan” is neither a gift nor bequest. In a controversial move under its former director, Andrea Rich, LACMA gave Broad substantial sway over a new contemporary wing to be built with his money and with his name on it. “The gamble is that someday the museum will inherit the art,” as Michael Kimmelman wrote in the NY Times.
It would appear that Michael Govan, LACMA’s new director, has some work to do.