Eli Broad

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Eli Broad
Born (1933-06-06) June 6, 1933 (age 80)
New York, New York, U.S.
Residence Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Nationality American
Ethnicity Jewish
Alma mater Michigan State University
Occupation Businessman
Net worth Steady US$6.3 billion (March 2013)[1]
Spouse(s) Edythe Lawson
Children 2

Eli Broad (/brɵd/; born June 6, 1933) is an American businessman and philanthropist from Detroit, Michigan who resides in Los Angeles, California.

Contents

Early life and career[edit]

Broad was born in the Bronx, the only child of Lithuanian Jewish immigrant parents. His father was a house painter, and his mother a dressmaker. His family moved to Detroit when he was six years old. In Detroit his father operated five-and-dime stores and his mother resumed work as a dressmaker.[2] Broad attended Detroit Public Schools. In 1951, he graduated from Detroit Central High School. He then attended Michigan State University, majoring in accounting with a minor in economics and graduating cum laude in 1954. That same year, the twenty-one-year-old Broad married eighteen-year-old Edythe "Edye" Lawson. Broad went on to earn the distinction of becoming the youngest Michigan resident to have attained the credentials of Certified Public Accountant (CPA)[citation needed]. Prior to entering the home building business, Broad worked as an accountant for two years.

Kaufman and Broad[edit]

In 1957, Broad went into business with Donald Kaufman, who was a home builder and related to his wife, Edye. Broad financed his end of the enterprise with $25,000 borrowed from his wife's parents. Kaufman and Broad Home Corporation (now KB Home) recognized the type of housing that would appeal to a new generation of Detroit home buyers flocking to the suburbs. These family homes followed a template of homogeneous design, what became identified as tract housing. The Kaufman and Broad model invariably featured an attached carport and omitted the basement. They christened this model the "Award Winner" and priced it at $13,700. Fourteen homes were sold the first weekend.[2]

SunAmerica[edit]

Looking to diversify the cyclical home building business, Broad in 1971 acquired Sun Life Insurance Company of America, a small family-owned insurance company in Baltimore, for $52 million. Broad transformed Sun Life into the retirement savings powerhouse SunAmerica. He sold SunAmerica to the American International Group in 1999 for $18 billion. He was CEO of SunAmerica, now a subsidiary of AIG, until 2000.

Broad wrote a 2012 book, The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking (ISBN 978-1118173213).[3]

Philanthropy[edit]

The Eli and Edythe Broad Plaza in front of the Caltrans District 7 Headquarters

Eli and Edythe Broad are the founders of The Broad Foundations,[4] with the mission of advancing entrepreneurship for the public good in education, science and the arts. In doing this, the foundation focuses on the arts and culture in Southern California, championing the revitalization of downtown Los Angeles, and reforming K-12 public education across the United States.[5] The Broad Foundations, which include The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and The Broad Art Foundation, have assets of $2.1 billion.[citation needed]

In 2010, Broad backed "The Giving Pledge," an initiative started by fellow billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates for rich Americans to give at least half of their wealth to charity.[6] Eli and Edythe Broad committed to give 75 percent of their wealth to philanthropy during or after their lifetimes.[citation needed] In 2010, Broad gave $10 million to the Washington, D.C. Public Education Fund, $2.2 million to the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard, and $2 million to a Los Angeles charter-schools foundation.[7][8]

Arts[edit]

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles[edit]

Following an initiative by philanthropist Marcia Weisman, Broad was the founding chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 1979 and held that post until 1984; during his tenure he recruited Pontus Hultén as founding director of the museum.[9] Later, in 1984, he helped to negotiate the acquisition of the Panza Collection for the museum. In 2008, his foundation gave a $30 million challenge grant to rebuild the museum’s endowment and to provide exhibition support. His offer was contingent on the museum remaining independent and not merging with LACMA.[10] The following year, Broad was a key figure in the selection of the museum's new director, Jeffrey Deitch, and several new board members.[11] It has been alleged that Broad's pledge affected fundraising, and that there is a perception of his influence over the museum being too great. Four MOCA trustees' spouses serve on boards of charities related to Broad.[12] When Victor Pinchuk was appointed to MOCA's Board of Trustees in late 2009, Broad joined Pinchuk's Future Generation Art Prize Board.[13]

On August 9, 2012 it was reported that Broad skipped two payments of 750,000 each that he promised to the Museum of Contemporary Art.[12] In June 2012 Broad fired chief curator Paul Schimmel.[14] Four artists on the board of trustees resigned in protest: Barbara Kruger, Cathie Opie, John Baldassari, and Ed Ruscha.[15] Art dealer Margo Leavin closed her gallery after 42 years, shortly after the shake-up. "Museums need knowledgeable people and it's not happening at MOCA," she said.[16]

Los Angeles County Museum of Art[edit]

Broad also is a life trustee and member of the executive committee of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he was instrumental in recruiting Andrea Rich as the museum's president[17] and Michael Govan as director. In 2003, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation gave $60 million to LACMA as part of the museum's renovation campaign to create the Broad Contemporary Art Museum and acquire art.[18]

Walt Disney Hall[edit]

From 1996 on, Broad and then-Mayor Richard Riordan led the fundraising campaign to build the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall. The Broads later provided the lead gift to the Los Angeles Opera to bring Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen to Los Angeles in 2009—2010.[19]

Others[edit]

Broad Art Center, by Meier at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture

In 2000, Broad donated $23.2 million towards the Broad Art Center at UCLA, designed by Richard Meier[20] On June 1, 2007 Eli and Edythe Broad pledged $26 million to Michigan State University for construction of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, and they gave another $2 million to the project in 2010.[21] The Broads also contributed $10 million in 2008 for a programming endowment for a state-of-the-art music and performing arts center at Santa Monica College, The Eli and Edythe Broad Stage, and an adjacent black box performance space, The Edye.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at 547 East Circle Drive, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan USA

Education[edit]

In 1991, Broad endowed the Eli Broad College of Business at his alma mater Michigan State University, from which he graduated cum laude in 1954.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation's education work is focused on dramatically improving urban K-12 public education through better governance, management, labor relations and competition. The Broad Foundation has three national flagship initiatives:

The Broad Superintendents Academy is an 18-month executive management program to train working CEOs and other top executives from business, non-profit, military, government and education backgrounds to lead urban school systems.[22]

The Broad Residency in Urban Education is a two-year management development program that trains recent graduate students, primarily with business and law degrees, who have several years of work experience and places them immediately into managerial positions in the central operations of urban school districts.[23]

The $1 million Broad Prize for Urban Education is the nation’s largest education award given annually to urban school districts that have made the greatest overall performance and improvement in student achievement while closing achievement gaps between income and ethnic groups.[24]

On April 25, 2007, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation joined forces with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledging a joint $60 million to create Strong American Schools, a nonprofit project responsible for running Ed in 08, an information and initiative campaign aimed at encouraging 2008 presidential contenders to include education in their campaign policies.[25]

Biomedical research[edit]

The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard was founded with a $100 million donation to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from Broad and his wife, Edythe, in 2003. In 2005, the couple donated another $100 million to Harvard. On September 4, 2008 the Broads gave another $400 million to endow the Broad Institute. The endowment is managed by Harvard's investment unit.[26]

The Eli and Edythe Broad CIRM Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC is the product of an public-private partnership between voter-created CIRM, the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, which donated $30 million in 2006.[27] In 2007, the Broads also donated $20 million to the UCLA Stem Cell Institute. One year later, they gave a major gift to the University of California, San Francisco for the new headquarters of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research, which opened in February 2011. Broad is also a member of the California Institute of Technology Board of Trustees where he funded the Broad Center for the Biological Sciences. In 2009, the Broads gave $5 million to fund the Joint Center for Translational Medicine at Caltech and UCLA.

Grand Avenue Project[edit]

Broad has been instrumental in developing Grand Avenue as an arts center. He helped to found the Grand Avenue Committee, a group formed to oversee additional development of the avenue, and is co-chair of its board of directors.[28]

Art Collection[edit]

Broad’s interest in art was born in 1973; the first work he bought was a Van Gogh drawing entitled "Cabanes a Saintes-Maries" 1888).[29] Usually, his trajectory as an art collector is traced to mentoring by the late Taft Schreiber.[30] At first, the Broads assembled a notable collection of works by Miró, Picasso and Matisse.[31] Eventually, the pair began to concentrate on post-World War II paintings, at times selling some of their original purchases to fund new ones.[32] Larry Gagosian is credited to be Broad's most important advisor and dealer when purchasing works of art.

When they ran out of wall space in their home, Eli and Edythe Broad pioneered a lending library for contemporary art. The Broad Art Foundation, which they established in 1984, has made more than 7,800 loans to more than 485 museums and university galleries worldwide. The Broads' have two collections—a personal collection with nearly 500 works and The Broad Art Foundation's collection, which has approximately 1,500 works Modern and contemporary art. The collection was one of the most sought-after by museums in the U.S., until January 2008, when Broad and his wife decided that their personal collection would ultimately go to their foundation to make loans to museums rather than give any of the art away.[33] In 1988, architect Frederick Fisher designed office space, archives and extensive private galleries for the Broad Art Foundation in a former telephone switching station in the Ocean Park section of Santa Monica.[34] On August 23, 2010 the Broads formally announced that they would build and endow a museum to house the Broad Collections, on a Grand Avenue site owned by the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency in downtown Los Angeles across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall.[35]

Some of the best-known works are by contemporary artists including:[36]

  • John Baldessari's two text paintings from 1967–68.
  • Jasper Johns – flag paintings (1960 and 1967), mixed-media "Watchman" (1964), "hatch" (1975)
  • Jeff Koons – fluorescent-lighted vacuum cleaners (1981), floating basketballs and bronze lifeboat (both 1985), stainless-steel bunny rabbit (1986), "Bubbles," a life-size porcelain portrait of Michael Jackson and his pet chimpanzee (1988) bought on May 15, 2001 for 5.6M,[37] the first "Balloon Dog" (1994, in blue), and a "Cracked Egg" purchased for $3.5 million in 2006.[38] Broad owns more than 20 Koons pieces, and donated €640,000 ($900,000) to help sponsor a 2008 Koons retrospective at Versailles (with fellow Koons collector François Pinault).[39]
  • Roy Lichtenstein – three comic strip paintings (1962–65) and his 1969 abstraction of a mirror. In November 1994, Broad purchased "I...I'm Sorry" for $2.5 million USD at a Sotheby's auction, paid with his American Express credit card, and thereby earned 2.5 million frequent flyer miles.
  • Robert Rauschenberg – 1954 red abstraction.
  • Damien Hirst – Away From the Flock.[40]
  • Edward Ruscha's first word painting, "Boss" (1961) and his 1964 picture of Norm's La Cienega Boulevard restaurant on fire.
  • Cindy Sherman – twelve photographs from 1977–80 photographs.
  • David Smith – Cubi XXVIII, executed in 1965. Broad's October 2005 purchase at a Sotheby's auction set a contemporary art auction record of $23,816,000.[38] Broad claimed he had "been looking for a Cubi for more than a decade...I knew it would go way over the estimate and I was prepared, frankly, to pay more than what I bid." [41]
  • Andy Warhol's advertising image, "Where's your rupture?", two Marilyn Monroe images, a twenty-fold silkscreen of Jackie Kennedy, an Elvis, a dance diagram, a wanted poster, an electric chair and a Campbell's soup can—clam chowder, Manhattan style (purchased for $11.8 million)[38] – all from 1961 to 1967.

Wealth[edit]

With an estimated current net worth of around $5.8 billion, Broad was ranked by Forbes as the 173rd wealthiest person in the world in 2011.[42] A major donor to Democratic political candidates, Broad is listed eighth on the Newsmeat Power Rankings list of "most famous and powerful Americans, whose campaign contributions result most often in victory".[43]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Forbes: The World's Billionaires - Eli Broad March 2013
  2. ^ a b Bruck, Connie, "The Art of the Billionaire", The New Yorker, December 10, 2010
  3. ^ "Eli Broad offers life lessons in 'The Art of Being Unreasonable'", Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2012
  4. ^ Eli and Edythe Broad. The Broad Foundations. Retrieved August 18, 2011.
  5. ^ "Press Release". LACMA. Retrieved 2011-04-25. [dead link]
  6. ^ Campbell, Dakin (2010-06-17). "Broad, Bloomberg Back Buffett Call for Billionaire Donations". Bloomberg. Retrieved 2011-04-25. 
  7. ^ Jerusalem Post: "Jews take 5 of top 6 spots in annual list of top US givers" By JACOB BERKMAN September 2, 2011
  8. ^ Jewish Philanthropy: "Jewish Philanthropy 2.0" February 23, 2011
  9. ^ Peter Aspden, Putting LA at the heart of world culture Financial Times, November 6, 2009. Accessed February 1, 2011.
  10. ^ Wyatt, Edward (November 23, 2008). "Billionaire Offers Arts Bailout in Los Angeles". The New York Times. 
  11. ^ Ouroussoff, Nicolai (May 24, 2010). "Eli Broad Said to Pick Site for New Museum". The New York Times. 
  12. ^ a b Kazakina Palmeri, Katya Christopher (August 8, 2012). "Eli Broad Misses MOCA Payment In Museum’s Murky Finances". Bloomberg. Retrieved 17 August 2012. 
  13. ^ "Board". Future Generation Art Prize. Retrieved 2011-08-18. 
  14. ^ Wilson, Simone (June 28, 2012). "MOCA Fires Paul Schimmel, Chief Curator: Is This Part of Eli Broad's Downtown Takeover?". LA Weekly. Retrieved 17 August 2012. 
  15. ^ Knight, Christopher (July 16, 2012). "MOCA's loss of artist-trustees strikes at museum's core". LA Times. Retrieved 18 August 2012. 
  16. ^ NG, David (August 15, 2012). "For Margo Leavin Gallery, changing tastes mean it's time to close". LA Times. Retrieved 20 August 2012. 
  17. ^ Eli Broad Shares His Philosophy of Business and Leadership With the Anderson Community UCLA Anderson School of Management, May 12, 2002. Accessed February 1, 2011.
  18. ^ Boehm, Mike (March 6, 2007). "BP gives $25 million to LACMA: The BP donation will go toward a solar entrance that the British oil firm hopes will invoke energy innovation." (– Scholar search). Los Angeles Times [dead link]
  19. ^ Steinhauer, Jennifer (February 8, 2010). "Iron Checkbook Shapes Cultural Los Angeles". The New York Times. 
  20. ^ "Opening Date for the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Center at UCLA Set for September 14". Arts.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2011-04-25. 
  21. ^ "MSU receives $26 million from Eli and Edythe Broad for new art museum". Special.newsroom.msu.edu. 2011-01-13. Retrieved 2011-04-25. [dead link]
  22. ^ "Home Page – The Broad Superintendents Academy". Broadacademy.org. Retrieved 2011-04-25. 
  23. ^ "Home Page – The Broad Residency in Urban Education". Broadresidency.org. Retrieved 2011-04-25. 
  24. ^ "Home Page – The Broad Prize for Urban Education". Broadprize.org. Retrieved 2011-04-25. 
  25. ^ Herszenhorn, David M. (2007-04-25). "Billionaires Start $60 Million Schools Effort". Select.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2011-04-25. 
  26. ^ Strom, Stephanie (September 5, 2008). "$400 Million Gift to Genetic Institute". The New York Times. Retrieved May 1, 2010. 
  27. ^ Lewit, Meghan. "USC breaks ground on cutting-edge stem cell center". Usc.edu. Retrieved 2011-04-25. 
  28. ^ Tim Rutten, Broad’s vision for downtown Los Angeles Times, April 23, 2010. Accessed 1 February 2011.
  29. ^ "ELI BROAD – Article detail – Flash Art". Flashartonline.com. Retrieved 2011-04-25. 
  30. ^ Knight, Christopher (January 16, 2011). "Eli Broad, today's Norton Simon". Los Angeles Times. 
  31. ^ Aspden, Peter (November 6, 2009). "Putting LA at the heart of world culture". Financial Times. Retrieved 2011-04-25. 
  32. ^ Palmeri, Christopher (October 29, 2001). "Art Collecting, Eli Broad Style". Businessweek. Retrieved 2011-04-25. 
  33. ^ Wyatt, Edward (January 8, 2008). "An Art Donor Opts to Hold On to His Collection". New York Times. 
  34. ^ Hawthorne, Christopher (June 20, 2010). "Eli Broad: L.A.'s peripatetic patron". Los Angeles Times. 
  35. ^ Ng, David (August 24, 2010). "Eli Broad says Grand Avenue will be site of new contemporary art museum". Los Angeles Times. 
  36. ^ Knight, Christopher (January 10, 2008). "Will LACMA's reputation suffer from Broad's change of heart?" (– Scholar search). Los Angeles Times. [dead link]
  37. ^ "Sotheby's – Auctions – Calendar – Contemporary Art Part One". Sothebys.com. Retrieved 2011-04-25. [dead link]
  38. ^ a b c "Eli Broad Buys Koons' $3.5M "Cracked Egg"". ArtNews. October 16, 2006. Retrieved November 14, 2008. 
  39. ^ Covington, Richard (November 2008). "Where Michael Jackson Meets Louis XIV: How the Jeff Koons exhibition at Versailles led to a national controversy in France". ArtNews.  ARTNews, Nov. 2008, p. 104: "One of the main sponsors helping to defray that cost was Pinault, who, officials say, contributed about €960,000 toward the exhibition's €1.9 million ($2.6 million) total cost. (Other private sponsors, including Los Angeles property developers Eli and Edythe Broad, who count more than 20 Koons pieces in their collection, contributed €640,000 [$900,000], and the state chipped in €300,000 [$400,000], according to Versailles officials.)"
  40. ^ LACMA Press release[dead link], accessed, December 12, 2010
  41. ^ Judd Tully (November 11, 2005). ArtInfo Exclusive: Eli Broad Talks about His $24M Purchase of Cubi XXVIII. ARTINFO. Retrieved 2008-05-19. 
  42. ^ "Eli Broad – Forbes Profile". Forbes.com. March 11, 2011. 
  43. ^ "Newsmeat Power Rankings". Retrieved April 29, 2010. 

External links[edit]

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