A mixed review on the institution's finances by Moody's Investors Service prompts the action. An additional $100 million is sought.

After nearly five years of constant construction and much more still to go, leaders of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art have resolved not to continue until they have socked away an additional $100 million in donations on top of the $320 million in cash and pledges given so far.

A mixed review of LACMA's recession-buffeted finances issued Wednesday by Moody's Investors Service lays out the reasons why the museum that opened the Broad Contemporary Art Museum and the BP Grand Entrance in 2008 and the Resnick Exhibition Pavilion in September is stopping for a refueling before pushing ahead.

LACMA officials said early in 2009 that the poor economy had forced them to delay the next scheduled project, carving offices and more gallery space out of LACMA West, a former May Co. department store at Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. But no fundraising threshold had been publicly attached to its resumption until now. (The LACMA West renovation would complete the second part of a three-phase, $450-million construction agenda. The third phase involves unspecified changes to aging buildings on the east end of the campus.)

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