With private art museums on the rise, it comes as no surprise that Los Angeles power couple Eli and Edythe Broad decided to jump on the bandwagon.

They've validated their position as top tier art collectors by opening their own private art museum. And lets face it, the tax breaks they're getting must be pretty sweet too.

When moving to Los Angeles in the 1960s, billionaire Eli Broad felt that LA was missing the pizzazz of rich artistic culture, so he decided to create one himself. The Broads began by donating massive sums to all the local art museums, holding positions on the boards of many cultural institutions, and organizing fundraising events for creative venues (most notably the Walt Disney Concert Hall). While this philanthropic bender would be sufficient to most, the Broad’s were not satiated. The Broad’s yearned to see the seedy skid row stricken streets of downtown Los Angeles become the shining glory of this city and a force to be reckoned with in the art world. So what better way to do that, reasoned the Broads, than to construct a $140 million dollar building and fill it with the most notable artists of our time?    

The Broad museum is home to over 2,000 works from Eli and Edythe’s personal art collections. The Broad’s taste in art is blue chip contemporary to the max. You will see all the biggest (and most expensive) names in the modern art world within these walls. The Broads also seem to exhibit a proclivity towards the big, bizarre, and often controversial.

While the work that finds refuge in this sanctuary are celebrities in their own right, the patronage of this institution has been nothing less than fanatical. In typical LA fashion, the Broad has constructed an aura of hip meets sophistication, which explains why entrance to this museum has been booked solid since opening in September 2015. If you can manage to snag yourself one of those coveted entrance tickets and are willing to stand in lines that sometimes circle the block, you can rejoice in the fact that visiting this museum is completely free.    

This fashionable reputation has become evident through the fact that the average visitor is only 32 years old, 14 years younger than the national average age of art museums attendance in the US according to the National Endowment for the Arts. So, if you are looking for the new and exciting thing to do in LA, you might want to consider dropping by the Broad. Everyone else seems to be doing it.