The Broad Oculus

by Joe Schofield

Title

The Broad Oculus

Artist

Joe Schofield

Medium

Photograph

Description

The Broad Oculus.
The Broad is a new contemporary art museum founded by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. The museum is designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler and offers free general admission. The museum is home to the 2,000 works of art in the Broad collection, which is among the most prominent holdings of postwar and contemporary art worldwide. With its innovative veil-and-vault concept, the 120,000-square-foot, $140-million building features two floors of gallery space to showcase The Broad's comprehensive collection and is the headquarters of The Broad Art Foundation's worldwide lending library.

Dubbed “the veil and the vault,” the museum’s design merges the two key components of the building: public exhibition space and collection storage. Rather than relegate the storage to secondary status, the “vault,” plays a key role in shaping the museum experience from entry to exit. Its heavy opaque mass is always in view, hovering midway in the building. Its carved underside shapes the lobby below, while its top surface is the floor plate of the exhibition space. The vault stores the portions of the collection not on display in the galleries or on loan, but DS+R provided viewing windows so visitors can get a sense of the intensive depth of the collection and peer right into the storage holding. The vault is enveloped on all sides by the “veil,” an airy, honeycomb-like structure that spans across the block-long gallery and provides filtered natural daylight.

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October 6th, 2020

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