Broad museum on a schedule
The new downtown museum announces its hours and more.
The Broad museum announced some operational nuts and bolts Wednesday — opening hours, advance ticketing, parking rates and such — for the $ 140- million contemporary art showcase opening Sept. 20.
But the eye- opener— and don’t blink— was the fact that visitors will have “approximately 45 seconds” to experience one of the Broad’s recent acquisitions, Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrored Room— the Souls of Millions of Light Years Away.”
The immersive work, in which viewers stand amid an array of LED lights reflecting off the mirrored walls of a 200- square- foot room, accommodates one person at a time. It gives a sense of entering a colorful, starry cosmos.
Museum spokeswoman Alex Capriotti said the Broad decided on the 45- second limit after consulting with Kusama’s studio. A museum staff member will shepherd viewers in and out, aiming to have one per minute see the installation— a maximum of 600 per day.
At10 a. m. Monday, the new downtown museum for Eli and Edythe Broad’s collection will begin accepting online reservations ( www.thebroad.org/ tickets) for admission, though reservations aren’t required. ( The Broad will provide timed reservations for “Infinity Mirrored Room” after visitors arrive at the museum.)
The Broad will be open six days a week, closing Mondays. To keep up with its newacross-the- street neighbor, the Museum of Contemporary Art will open six days a week starting Sept. 1 instead of the five- day schedule it adopted to cut costs when funds ran low several years ago.
MOCA spokeswoman Sarah Stifler said it will be closed Tuesdays only instead of Tuesdays and Wednesdays, having picked that day in coordination with the Broad. This way, Stifler said, “the public would always have some art to see on Grand Avenue.” MOCA will continue to charge $ 12 admission.
The Broad, which will stay open until 8 p. m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, will be free at all times when it debuts with an exhibition of more than 250 highlights fromthe collection amassed by its founding couple.
In the future, admission to the Broad’s permanent collection galleries will remain free, but there may be a charge for temporary exhibitions.
The 48-hour week at the Broad will tie it with the Hammer Museum in Westwood for the most ample schedule for a major Los Angeles museum offering substantial displays of contemporary art. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which includes the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, is open 45 hours aweek.
The Broad’s hours will be 11 a. m. to 5 p. m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 11a. m. to 8p. m. Thursdays and Fridays, 10 a. m. to 8 p. m. Saturdays and10 a. m. to 6 p. m. Sundays.
Parking in the garage beneath the Broad will cost $ 12, compared with $ 9 for event parking at the nearby Music Center and Walt Disney Concert Hall. LACMA also charges $ 12 to park and the Getty Museum charges $ 15. But Broad visitors willing to walk a fewblocks can park in the California Plaza garage, which will charge $ 8 to museumgoers who get their parking ticket validated at the Broad.