June 26 (Bloomberg) -- The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles said today that it raised about $57 million in the first half of 2009. The museum said it has reversed a decade of declining contributions to its endowment fund.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, started by homebuilding and retirement fund billionaire Eli Broad, will match a $4.25 million contribution from MOCA’s board to the museum’s endowment, the organization said in a press release.

“This institution deserves to be saved because Los Angeles, with the country’s second largest population of working artists and great art schools, needs a great contemporary art museum,” Broad, 76, a life trustee and founding member of MOCA, said in a telephone interview today.

Other notable gifts, according to the museum, include $16.4 million from trustees, in addition to their $1.9 million in annual giving and $3 million in individual gifts from patrons.

“This is the biggest turnaround of a cultural institution in recent years,” Broad said. “MOCA has a balanced budget this year and next, no debt and it owns its facilities free and clear.”

The 30-year-old museum has struggled financially in recent years as its endowment declined to about $6 million at the end of 2008 from about $38.2 million in 2000, partly because it borrowed about $17 million from the fund.

$15 Million for Shows

Since December, the Broad Foundation has given $15 million to the museum to fund exhibitions. Another $15 million from the nonprofit will match gifts that replenish the endowment.

MOCA Chief Executive Officer Charles E. Young said in a statement that the turnaround couldn’t have happened “without the continuing generosity” of Broad’s foundation, the board and individual donors.

The museum also said that it elected three new trustees to the board for 2010. They are Aspen Art museum trustee Carolyn Clark Powers; television producer Darren Star, of “Sex and the City” and “Melrose Place” fame; and Marc I. Stern, vice chairman of the TCW Group Inc., a Los Angeles-based asset management firm.

To contact the writer on this story: Patrick Cole in New York at pcole3@Bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 26, 2009 18:07 EDT