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Art Museum Mixes Pomp and Hint of Pop

The site has seen several architects over the years.

From The New York Times -- Interior Design, 2/15/2008 12:00:00 AM

This city is growing up, and I count myself among those who see that as a mixed blessing. Over the last decade or so it has embarked on its most ambitious cultural building boom in a generation, adding a new dimension to a city whose notable civic monuments have famously been its freeways. But with exceptions like Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, these projects have often failed to live up to Los Angeles’s great tradition of architectural experimentation.

The new Broad Contemporary Art Museum is no different. An addition to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, it had been viewed as a way of cleaning up what many saw as a muddle of mismatched buildings. Beyond that, many hoped it would serve as a striking monument to the city’s growing power in the contemporary art world.

Designed by Renzo Piano, the new addition takes a mostly pragmatic approach to the site. Mr. Piano reorganizes the complex along a strong central axis, giving it a clarity that it desperately needed. His top-floor galleries, which take advantage of the exquisite California sunlight, will no doubt thrill those whose main focus is how a museum’s design makes the art look.

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