LOS ANGELES, CA .- The Broad Art Foundation has hired seasoned arts administrator Heath Fox as deputy director of operations for The Broad, a new contemporary art museum that philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad are building on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles .

Since 2006, Fox has been assistant dean of arts and humanities at the University of California , San Diego , where he serves as the senior administrative officer for six academic departments and is responsible for planning, policy development and resource administration.

From 2001 to 2006, Fox was director of administration for the San Diego Museum of Art, serving one year as acting executive director. In that position, he was responsible for strategic planning, operational management and organizational administration.

Prior to that, Fox served as associate director of administration for the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego from 1997 to 2001, overseeing a capital expansion that included a fourfold increase in the size of the facility and a corresponding expansion of artistic programming, staffing and logistics. Previously, Fox spent two decades as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, retiring as lieutenant colonel in 1996.

Fox has a master's degree in museum studies from the University of Leicester and a bachelor's degree in business finance from Virginia Tech. He studied European art history at Sotheby's Institute of Art in London, completed the Harvard Graduate School of Education management development program, the Harvard Business School executive education program, and the Getty Leadership Institute museum management program.

Fox will start at The Broad on June 27, reporting to Joanne Heyler, director/chief curator of The Broad Art Foundation and director of The Broad, which is scheduled to open in spring 2013. For the next two years while the museum is under construction, Fox will assist Heyler in developing operational plans and management systems for the museum. Once The Broad is open, Fox will oversee museum operations and organizational planning.

"Heath will be an enormous asset to The Broad as we work toward the establishment of a truly 21st century museum," said Heyler. "His breadth of experience and solid track record in arts administration in both museum and academic settings will help us create a contemporary art institution with an unparalleled visitor experience."

"I am excited by the opportunity to help build a vibrant new arts institution in a dynamic cultural capital like Los Angeles ," said Fox. "This museum has the potential to redefine what we have come to expect from a contemporary art museum and is one of the most important museum building projects of the decade. I am delighted to be part of this growing professional team."

Designed by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, The Broad is a three-story museum featuring a unique porous "veil" that wraps the building and is visible through an expansive, top floor sky-lit gallery that will be home to great works of contemporary art drawn from the 2,000-piece Broad Collections. Located across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Museum of Contemporary Art , The Broad will also serve as the headquarters for the foundation's worldwide art lending library.

Featuring almost an acre of column-free gallery space, a lecture hall for up to 200 people, a ground floor multimedia gallery and a public lobby with display space and a museum shop, the 114,000-square-foot project will also include state-of-the-art archive, study and art storage space that will be available to scholars and curators who want to research works in the collection and borrow artworks for their institutions through The Broad Art Foundation.

Eli and Edythe Broad are creating a $200 million endowment to fund the museum and anticipate spending more than $130 million on its development and construction. In addition to building and creating an endowment to support the museum, the Broads are also advancing approximately $30 million and contributing an additional $4 million to $6 million to build a parking garage and public plaza for the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles and to renovate the Grand Avenue streetscape between Second and Third streets. The CRA will purchase the parking garage and operate it upon its completion.

Construction is already underway for the approximately 370-space parking garage, which is expected to be largely completed in late 2011 and will open concurrent with the museum. Construction of the museum will then commence and is expected to be completed in spring 2013.

The Broads created The Broad Art Foundation in 1984 as a pioneering lending library for contemporary artworks. Dedicated to increasing access to contemporary art for audiences worldwide, the foundation has made nearly 8,000 loans to 485 museums and galleries around the world. In addition to The Broad Art Foundation's works, the loan program also makes available art from The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Collection, for a total of more than 2,000 works by nearly 200 artists assembled over four decades of collecting. Together, the Broad Collections are among the most prominent and important collections of postwar and contemporary art in the world.