New: Broad Museum Ticketing Change

Queues have been long to see the free Grand Avenue gem, but that may ease up with a fresh ticketing schedule.

If you're on Grand Avenue near 2nd Street on any sunny Saturday, you'll likely behold three things: The gleam of Walt Disney Concert Hall's silver sails, the beauty of LA's skyscraping buildings, and a sizable queue in front of The Broad.

This shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with the contemporary art museum, its worldwide fame, and its founders, Eli and Edythe Broad. After all, The Broad, long before its September 2015 debut, announced that admission would be free, which almost guarantees, in any situation, there will be lines.

The museum's advance reservation system eased the flow, but spots to see the pieces by Alexander Calder, Chuck Close, Kara Walker, and Andy Warhol were filling up months ahead of time, and most notably on weekends.

But here's a bright light, as twinkly as the multitude of bulbs that give Yayoi Kusama's beloved "Infinity Room" its sparkle: The Broad has announced a new ticketing schedule, starting on May 1, 2016.

How does it work? It's all about A) booking at the start of the month for B) the following month.

So if you want to go in July, count on a ticket release starting on June 1. Want to plan an October visit? You'll want to book your slot at the beginning of September.

Each timed ticket release will happen at noon, local time, on the first of every month, for slots in the next month. Good? Yes. Easy. It feels like it bears repeating, but we're satisfied that all is clear here. 

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A museum representative says that the schedule was "designed to make it easier to plan a visit," a nice thing, indeed, given that queues have been turning the corner and wrapping around large swaths of the honeycomb'd structure.

A separately ticketed Cindy Sherman exhibit is just ahead, by the by, as is the wrap-up of the inaugural exhibit. (The Sherman tickets are $12 per adult and free for those 17 and under.) 

And if you still want to do the stand-by thing, and line up, out of the blue, without a ticket? No worries; that'll stay put. Some people awake thinking they'd to see something spectacular that day, perhaps Ms. Kusama's "Infinity Mirrored Room--The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away" (the full name for the piece, of course).

Spontaneity and a Broad swing-by are still a vital twosome, but if you know truly and definitely about a later date you'd like to go, this new ticketing schedule should provide more opportunities and sooner.

Any plan that eases the path to art, no admission required, is as grand as Grand Avenue, which can out-grand most fairly grand things, any Angeleno knows.

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