For Broad, key buys were viewed as vehicles to elevate the city. In 2006, the foundation acquired 568 “multiples” by Joseph Beuys, an eccentric German artist known for working with felt and spending three days in a room with a coyote. The purchase was “an opportunity to make a real difference in Los Angeles’s emergence as a world capital for contemporary art,” according to the foundation’s tax return that year.

Broad says he doesn’t buy art as an investment, but many pieces have surged in value along with the art market. The Roy Lichtenstein painting “I…I’m Sorry,” which Broad purchased at Sotheby’s in 1994 for $2.5 million -- paying with his American Express card -- is worth between $50 million and $60 million, according to de Pury, who was the sale’s auctioneer.

The new museum, three stories sheathed in a net of white concrete and designed by the firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, will open with displays of 1960s works by Ruscha and Andy Warhol; 1980s pieces by Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Cindy Sherman(the Broads own the world’s largest collection of Sherman’s work); sculptures by Jeff Koons, an immersive installation by Yayoi Kusama; and a large charcoal drawing by Robert Longo of the 2014 riots in Ferguson, Missouri.

Just to the east are some of the galleries new to L.A., including New York’s Matthew Marks and Venus. Hauser & Wirth, one of the biggest international exhibitors, with branches in London, Zurich, New York and Somerset in the U.K., is building a venue in a former flour mill. The New York- based art dealer Gavin Brown is a partner in a warehouse-size gallery near the downtown Arts District, while the West Village’s Michele Maccarone is about to inaugurate her local space nearby. Sprueth Magers will be in business early next year in a two-story building across from LACMA.

“For us, it made more sense to be Los Angeles than in New York,” says Andreas Gegner, a director at Sprueth Magers, which represents local artists including Ruscha, Baldessari and Sterling Ruby. “New York feels very static at the moment. Los Angeles has the openness and excitement about contemporary art. It has the potential to become a capital of the art world on eye-line with London and New York."

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