Eli and Edythe Broad

Eli and Edythe Broad. Photo: Elizabeth Daniels

American philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad have a long history of supporting the arts in California and indeed across the USA.

Untitled Film Still #06, Cindy Sherman, 1977. Photo: The Broad Foundation, Santa Monica

Over the past five decades the Broads have built two of the most prominent collections of post-war and contemporary art worldwide - The Eli and Edythe L Broad Collection and the Broad Art Foundation. They set up the Broad Art Foundation in 1984 as a lending library for contemporary artworks aimed at making art accessible to a broader audience worldwide.

Self Portrait, Andy Warhol, 1966. Photo: The Eli and Edythe L. Broad collection, LA

The two collections have nearly 20,000 artworks and have made more than 8,000 loans to nearly 500 galleries and museums around the world. Key artists include Cindy Sherman (largest single grouping of her work in the world), Roy Lichtenstein (the largest collection outside of the Lichtenstein Foundation), Jeff Koons (one of the largest collections in the world), Joseph Beuys, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andreas Gursky, Damien Hirst, Sharon Lockhart, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol.

I...I'm Sorry by Roy Lichtenstein, 1965-66. Photo: The Eli and Edythe L. Broad collection, LA

Eli Broad was the founding chairman and life trustee of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), to which the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation gave $30m in 2008. He is also a life trustee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The couple gave $60m to LACMA to build the Renzo Piano-designed Broad Contemporary Art Museum there, which opened in 2008, and for art acquisitions.

Balloon Dog, Jeff Koons, 1994-2000. Photo: The Broad Foundation, Santa Monica

The Broad Foundation also made a major contribution to the School of the Arts and Architecture at UCLA for the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Center, designed by Richard Meier, and gave Michigan State University, Eli Broad's alma mater, $33m to build and support the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at MSU by Zaha Hadid.