The Broad

The white lattice wrapping The Broad, on South Grand Avenue opposite Walt Disney Concert Hall, is one of the most recognizable buildings in Downtown Los Angeles, and the collection inside matches the shell. Nearly 2,000 works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama and Barbara Kruger hang in galleries lit almost entirely by the honeycomb ceiling, which filters daylight instead of relying on lamps. General admission is free. The catch is not the price, it is the ticket: free timed entries are released monthly and disappear quickly, so the practical question is never what The Broad costs, it is how to get in and where to leave the car.

How Much Do The Broad Tickets Cost?

The Broad's general admission is free. The museum releases free timed tickets monthly, and they go fast, so the real task is securing a slot rather than paying for one. Special exhibitions are ticketed separately, and the current price for those is unverified, so check the official ticketing page before assuming everything inside is free.

The free timed ticket system works on a monthly release cycle. The museum puts a batch of advance tickets on its own ticketing site, and the popular weekend and holiday slots tend to be claimed first. If the month you want is already gone, the museum also holds back a pool of same-day tickets released each morning, which is the fallback for visitors who plan late. A reserved-entry product with an audio tour is also sold through the booking panel at the top of this page, starting from $8, for visitors who prefer a guaranteed slot with commentary rather than racing the monthly release.

It is worth being precise about what free covers. General admission to the permanent collection is free. Special exhibitions sit outside that policy and can carry their own ticket and their own price, which is not verified here, so treat any special-show visit as a separate purchase and check availability on the listing or the museum's own site for the current figure.

For comparison, this free-admission model is the same one used at The Getty Center and The Getty Villa, where entry and the timed reservation are also free but parking carries the cost. At The Broad the pattern is inverted in an interesting way: admission is free and the building sits on top of a public parking garage, which is where the visit starts costing money.

Where Do I Park At The Broad?

Parking at The Broad is paid. The museum sits directly above a public garage entered from 2nd Street, and the rate is not published in our verified research, so treat parking as a real line in the trip budget and confirm the current figure on the museum's own site before you drive in.

The garage beneath the museum is the default option for most visitors, and it also serves the neighboring Walt Disney Concert Hall, which means concert and event nights change both availability and pricing. The honest advice is to check the rate on the day you go, because a figure quoted here would be a guess, and this site does not print guesses. What can be said firmly is that Downtown Los Angeles parking is never free at the curb on Grand Avenue, and street parking in the surrounding blocks is metered, time-limited and competitive.

The alternative that removes parking from the equation entirely is Metro. The Broad is a short uphill walk from the Civic Center / Grand Park station, served by the B and D lines, and Metro's own journey planner at metro.net will route the trip from wherever you are staying. Union Station is one stop away, which makes the museum reachable from much of the region without a car. Visitors combining The Broad with other Downtown museums, such as MOCA Grand Avenue directly across the street, will find transit simpler than moving a car between garages.

If you do drive, arrive close to your timed slot rather than hours early. The free ticket is for a window, not an all-day pass, and the garage charges by duration, so a long lunch elsewhere on Bunker Hill quietly inflates the parking bill. Check the current garage rate on the museum's official site before setting out.

What Are The Broad's Hours And Closed Days?

The Broad is closed on Mondays. The remaining days of the week it operates on a timed-entry schedule tied to the free ticket system, and exact opening hours are published on the museum's own site, so confirm them for the date you plan to visit rather than relying on a cached figure.

The Monday closure is the single most important scheduling fact, because it matches the pattern across much of the Los Angeles museum world. The Getty Center, MOCA Grand Avenue, the Griffith Observatory and the Hammer Museum all close on Mondays too, so a Monday museum day in LA is a thin day, and a visitor who plans The Broad for a Monday will find the doors shut and the neighborhood quieter than expected. Tuesdays through Sundays, the timed-entry system means the day is divided into slots, and your ticket names the window you may enter.

Because entry is timed, the practical rhythm of a visit differs from a walk-in museum. Arrive a few minutes before your slot, pass through the lobby, and the galleries are yours for as long as you like once inside. The museum does not chase visitors out at a fixed hour, but the last entry slot of the day effectively sets how much you can see, so an afternoon ticket late in the day is a compressed visit.

What Is Inside The Broad's Collection?

The Broad holds one of the world's significant collections of postwar and contemporary art, built around the private holdings of Eli and Edythe Broad, with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama and Barbara Kruger among the names on the walls. It is a museum of the last sixty years, not a survey of all eras.

The building was designed specifically to display this collection, and the third-floor galleries are the main event. The honeycomb ceiling, sometimes called the veil, lets filtered daylight into rooms that most museums would light artificially, and the effect changes with the weather outside. The collection leans heavily into American art from the 1960s onward: Pop art, conceptual photography, large-scale installation and the painters who defined the 1980s New York scene. Rotations happen regularly, so a repeat visit rarely shows the same hang.

Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms deserve a specific mention because they are the one part of the permanent collection that behaves like a special exhibition: demand is high, access is managed, and visitors should check what the arrangement is at the time of their visit on the museum's own site rather than assuming a general ticket covers it. The first-floor galleries host the ticketed special exhibitions, which change several times a year and are priced separately from the free general admission.

Visitors deciding between The Broad and other art museums in the city should know the difference in character. The Getty Center covers European painting up to the twentieth century plus gardens and views; The Broad starts roughly where the Getty's collection stops. Film fans can also pair The Broad with the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Wilshire Boulevard, though that is a cross-town trip rather than a walk.

How Long Should I Spend And What Is Nearby?

Allow two to three hours for The Broad's collection, longer if a special exhibition is running. The museum's Bunker Hill location puts Walt Disney Concert Hall, MOCA Grand Avenue, Grand Central Market and Angels Flight all within a short walk, so the visit is naturally half a day or more.

The building itself is compact compared with the Getty or LACMA, and the third-floor collection plus the first-floor special exhibition space can be seen at a steady pace in a couple of hours. What stretches the visit is the neighborhood. Walt Disney Concert Hall sits directly across the plaza and its exterior, the curved steel surfaces designed by Frank Gehry, can be walked around for free. MOCA Grand Avenue is next door, and it is also free, making the two museums the cheapest serious art pairing in the city.

Downhill from Bunker Hill, Angels Flight Railway connects the Grand Avenue cultural block to the Historic Core, and Grand Central Market sits at the bottom of the hill as the classic lunch stop for museum visitors. This whole stretch is covered by the one free walking tour that operates in Los Angeles: the Free Tour of Downtown LA, a two-hour pay-what-you-want walk that starts near The Broad and Walt Disney Concert Hall and continues past Angels Flight, the Bradbury Building and Olvera Street. It is the only English-language free walking tour in the city, so it is worth booking the free slot if your museum day has room for it. You can also Free Tour of Downtown LA (2 Hrs) to read the details before committing an afternoon.

For a full Downtown day, the sequence that works is The Broad in a morning slot, MOCA Grand Avenue across the street, lunch at Grand Central Market, and the afternoon in the Historic Core. LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, free and near Olvera Street, sits at the far end of that walk. None of this requires moving a car, which in Downtown Los Angeles is the difference between a relaxed day and an expensive one.

Do I Need A Timed Ticket And Other Practical Questions?

Yes, a timed ticket is how entry to The Broad works, and it is free. The monthly release is the main channel, the same-day pool is the backup, and the reserved-entry product in the booking panel above is the guaranteed option for visitors who want certainty or an audio tour included.

The monthly release rewards planning. Set a reminder for the day tickets open for your travel month, book on the museum's official ticketing site, and the visit is settled. Visitors booking late should watch for the same-day release each morning the museum is open, though those slots are limited and weekend days are the hardest. The paid reserved-entry product exists for exactly this situation: it costs from $8, and it bundles a guaranteed entry time with an audio tour, which suits visitors who would otherwise spend the morning refreshing a ticket page.

A few practical notes that come up repeatedly. Photography without flash is generally welcome in the permanent collection, but check on site for any restrictions on special exhibitions. The museum is closed Mondays, so the six other days carry all the demand. Bags go through security, and large items are better left in the car or at the hotel. The garage beneath the building is paid, and its current rate is on the official site. Visitors arriving by Metro should use the Civic Center / Grand Park station and route the trip via metro.net.

Finally, do not confuse The Broad with the paid museums nearby. MOCA Grand Avenue, across the street, is also free, though its sister site the Geffen Contemporary is temporarily closed. The GRAMMY Museum at LA Live is a paid, ticketed museum a few blocks south. Knowing which of these need money and which need only a reservation is the difference between a smooth Bunker Hill afternoon and a series of surprises at the door.

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