Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Eli Broad, one of the world's top 10 art buyers, said he won't give any of his 2,000 works to museums as he once intended, and will keep them in his private foundation.

``We now feel that we can best serve museums by continuing to make accessible a common collection of contemporary art that is shared among many institutions,'' Broad, 74, said in an e-mail statement.

Broad, a founder and former chief executive officer of the homebuilder KB Home and insurer SunAmerica Inc., said in the past he would leave his collection to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and other institutions. Instead, the art will be retained by the Broad Art Foundation, which has made 7,000 loans to 400 museums and galleries since he created it in 1984, Broad said.

Art that is in private museums or donated to public museums often is kept in storage or rarely seen, Broad said.

His foundation, which is essentially a lending library, might be a model for other collectors who are deciding what to do with their art, he said.

Broad's collection in California has contemporary artists from Andy Warhol to Jeff Koons. Borrowers of Broad's art include U.S. Ambassador Robert Tuttle, who decorated his London residence with a 1966 Roy Lichtenstein canvas of a weeping woman, ``I'm Sorry.''

With a fortune valued by Forbes magazine at $6 billion, Broad is on ARTnews magazine's list of the top 10 collectors. The Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA will open an exhibit on Feb. 16 that includes about 200 works from the Broad collections.

To contact the reporter on this story: Linda Sandler in New York at lsandler@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 8, 2008 17:45 EST