An in-progress look at the Broad museum

Architect Elizabeth Diller, dressed mostly in sober New York black, hard hat in hand, stood on the Grand Avenue sidewalk Friday morning in front of the Broad museum, which she designed with her New York firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and is set to open Sept. 20.

Was she giving an architectural preview? Doing damage control? Trying to regain some influence over the narrative of the museums construction, which has been beset by delays, fabrication problems and legal wrangling?

The answer seemed to be some combination of the three. Diller, more jovial than defensive, was joined on the tour by Joanne Heyler, the director of the Broad museum, but it was the architect who said she had helped initiate the plan to open the nearly finished museum to some journalists Friday and then to ticketed members of the general public on Sunday.

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In certain ways the advance look, seven months before the Broads official debut, was reminiscent of a decision by Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to give private tours of Renzo Pianos Resnick Pavilion when that building was also nearly finished in 2010.

Govan installed a large piece by Walter de Maria, "The 2000 Sculpture," inside the Resnick, allowing collectors, board members and critics a chance to see the building as a single, open gallery space before interior walls were installed.

The situation at the Broad is similar. Construction on the $140-million museums column-free top-floor gallery, covering 35,000 square feet (compared with 45,000 at the Resnick), is almost finished. Much of its concrete floor has been polished to a high sheen.

At the same time, the movable walls that will go up before the opening exhibition is installed, dividing the space (but stopping well short of the 23-foot ceiling), have yet to go up.

In other respects, the Broad case is a unique one, especially given the degree to which its construction has been plagued by delays (and with those delayed chronicled and picked apart by the media).

When the exterior scaffolding was removed from the building a few weeks ago, the reaction on social media and elsewhere was not good: People seemed let down that the facade they were now seeing in the flesh didnt live up to the promise of earlier digital renderings.

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An in-progress look at the Broad museum