The UCLA Library will house Eli Broad’s personal papers and archives — a collection that highlights his business, civic and philanthropic activities and the role he has played in expanding Los Angeles’ cultural scene, it was announced Wednesday.
“Eli Broad’s unique role as a business, civic and philanthropic leader has enabled Los Angeles to grow into a major global center for the arts, culture, public education and entrepreneurial activity, and we are deeply honored that he is donating his personal papers to the UCLA Library,” said UCLA University Librarian Ginny Steel.
“This major acquisition joins our other extensive holdings to make us the leading center for research on Los Angeles history and culture,” she said.
The Broad papers will be housed in UCLA Library Special Collections, along with the personal papers of Dorothy Chandler and Franklin D. Murphy, the records of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, papers from Mayor Tom Bradley’s administration, and the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive.
“I have been privileged to have four distinct careers — accounting, homebuilding, retirement savings and now philanthropy — and I am humbled to share the records of my activities with students and historians,” Broad said.
“We have always had a special relationship with UCLA, and I was impressed with the scholarship, digital access and curatorial professionalism of its Special Collections,” he said.
Broad’s papers will come to the library in installments. The first encompasses photographs, clippings, awards and ephemera, primarily from the 1990s and 2000s, documenting events, speeches and phone calls, SunAmerica annual reports and a scrapbook from the company’s 25th anniversary.
Broad is the founder of two Fortune 500 companies — SunAmerica Inc. and KB Home — and, with his wife, created The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, which focuses on improving K-12 schools and advancing scientific and medical research, and the Broad Art Foundation.
The collection contains designs from a competition to select the architect for the art museum at Michigan State University that bears the Broads’ names and schematic drawings for The Broad contemporary art museum that opened Sept. 20 in downtown Los Angeles to house the nearly 2,000 artworks in the couple’s collection.
—City News Service