Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art plans to announce new management and steps to improve its finances following a proposed merger with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and a separate, $30 million offer by billionaire Eli Broad to help the museum stay independent.

A new chief executive officer of the contemporary art museum, known as MoCA, and the financial plan will be announced this morning at the museum in downtown Los Angeles, according to a statement by MoCA and Broad’s foundation. Scheduled to appear at the announcement are David G. Johnson and Tom Unterman, co- chairmen of MoCA’s board, along with Broad and members of the Los Angeles City Council.

The County Museum of Art’s private board of trustees last week proposed a merger with MoCA, a month after art collector and philanthropist Broad made his offer to invest $30 million in MoCA. The Board of Museum Associates, which owns the County Museum’s collection and pays most of its staff and operating expenses, said it presented a plan to MoCA’s board “to preserve the independence and integrity of both institutions while combining their operations and infrastructure.”

MoCA’s endowment under its current director, Jeremy Strick, peaked at $38.2 million in 2000 and fell to $19.8 million in 2007, after MoCA borrowed about $17.2 million from the endowment, the museum has said. The New York Times, citing people who were briefed on the museum’s finances, reported earlier this month that the endowment recently dropped to about $6 million. The museum’s operating budget is about $21 million in the current fiscal year.

Museum Building

MoCA’s collection is displayed in a building designed by Arata Isozaki on Grand Avenue near the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and at the Geffen Contemporary, a former warehouse building in an industrial neighborhood of downtown.

Broad, 75, was the founding chairman of MoCA, and is planning to build his own Los Angeles-area museum to display more than 2,000 contemporary photographs, paintings and sculptures in the collection of his Broad Art Foundation.

“The arts are in tough shape,” Broad said last month at a panel discussion on philanthropy. “MoCA is an important institution in this town. They need to reduce their budget before efforts are made to find additional resources.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Taub in Los Angeles at dtaub@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: December 23, 2008 00:51 EST