QUICK TAKES - June 27, 2009

L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art says it has raised $56.9 million in the six months since it accepted a helping hand from Eli Broad.

Broad has anted up more than half the $56.9 million himself through the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, which pledged $30 million in December as the cornerstone of MOCA’s self-rescue plan. The remaining $26.9 million includes $16.4 million in special rescue-giving from members of MOCA’s board, $1.9 million in regular board giving toward ongoing operations, $3 million in gifts from patrons who aren’t board members, and $5.6 million collected from various other sources, including corporate donations, fundraising events, and the fees that rank and file art lovers pay when they join as museum members

The $56.9 million total, however, depends on a certain amount of chicken counting of unhatched eggs. Of the Broad pledge, half is a regular gift with no strings attached, to be paid over five years, with the money earmarked for funding exhibitions. The other $15 million isn’t so bankable: It’s contingent on MOCA coming up with a dollar-for-dollar match, with those contributions and the Broad match pegged to replenish an endowment that Broad has said totaled just $5 million last December.

The recovery bid involves cuts as well as fundraising, as MOCA makes do with an operating budget of $15.5 million, down from pre-crisis budgets that had exceeded $20 million.

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Mike Boehm