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A new building that UCLA's acting chancellor dubbed a "magnificent edifice" was unveiled at the Westwood campus Wednesday morning during a ceremony that drew about 200 well-wishers, with speaking roles by philanthropist Eli Broad, state First Lady Maria Shriver and Getty Center architect Richard Meier.
The university is billing the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Center, which opens to the public today, as "Los Angeles' newest cultural destination." The structure, though, is actually a $52-million adaptive reuse of the old, unlovely Dickson Art Center, and will be of use mostly to university faculty and students in the visual arts programs of the School of Arts and Architecture.
Broad, whose foundation donated $23.2 million of the cost, said "the gift combines three of our passions: education, the arts and Los Angeles." The building includes exhibition galleries for the departments of art and design/media arts and is, Broad said, another step in the city's emergence as the world's fourth cultural capital alongside Paris, New York and London.
"Some people say, 'Why...