Broad museum proposed

The L.A. billionaire wants to build a public museum in Bev Hills that would display works from his charitable foundation and personal collection. The proposal includes offices for Broad's art foundation. "There are other sites we are looking at but this is one we are taking very, very seriously," Joanne Heyler, director and chief curator of the foundation, told Bloomberg News. Broad even has a location in mind: at the corner of Santa Monica and Wilshire boulevards, between the CAA building (now housing Sony BMG) and the Beverly Hilton.

Works in the foundation's collection include photographs by Cindy Sherman, paintings by Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol's 1986 silkscreen of the Statue of Liberty, Damien Hirst's 1994 lamb in formaldehyde, and Charles Ray's 1973 collection of 16 Kodachrome self-portraits called "All My Clothes." "We want a new headquarters, a space to have works that are not on loan to others at any given moment available for study by curators and scholars," Heyler said.

You might recall that Broad decided not to donate his collection of 2,000 artworks to LACMA. Instead, the Broad Art Foundation will continue to hold the collection and lend it to galleries and museums around the world. No comment yet from Bev Hills officials.