.png)
Manhattan, NY The New Museum, the city’s only museum dedicated exclusively to contemporary art, will open it’s 60,000 s/f building expansion designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas in collaboration with Cooper Robertson this fall.
Founded in 1977 in a temporary space on Hudson St., the New Museum has experimented and evolved since its founding as a hub for new art and new ideas, expanding its footprint at key moments in its history to better serve artists and the public. Its OMA-designed expansion will complement the New Museum’s existing SANAA-designed flagship building on the Bowery at Prince St. while doubling the museum’s gallery space; improving visitor flow through the addition of three elevators, an atrium stair, and an entrance plaza; creating new venues for artist residencies and public programs; and establishing a purpose-built home for the museum’s cultural incubator NEW INC, among many other new and expanded features, marking a transformative moment for the museum and the city.
The OMA building will be named in honor of the late visionary philanthropist Toby Devan Lewis, a long-serving New Museum trustee whose $30 million contribution to the Capital Campaign is the largest gift in the museum’s history. To date, the New Museum has raised $118 million towards its capital campaign goal of $125 million, with $82 million in construction costs.
“The New Museum has always been a future-facing museum — not a place for preserving and recording history, but a place where history is made,” said Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis director of the New Museum. “We are thrilled to be working with Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas on OMA’s first public building in New York City, ushering in a new era of possibilities for the New Museum as a vital civic resource for New Yorkers and the global arts community.”
“The New Museum is an incubator for new cultural perspectives and production, and the expansion aims to embody that attitude of openness,” said Shigematsu, OMA partner.
“Imagined as a highly connected yet distinct counterpart to the existing museum’s verticality and solidity, the new building will offer horizontally expansive galleries for curatorial variety, open vertical circulation, and a diversity of spaces for gathering, exchange, and creation. The building is further shaped to create an active public face—including an outdoor plaza at the ground, moments of transparency throughout the central atrium, and terraced openings at the top that will openly engage the surrounding community and beyond.”
“We are extremely grateful to all of those making the New Museum’s next chapter a reality, which would not be possible without the generous support of our Board of Trustees as well as numerous individuals, foundations, and government champions of this important project,” said James-Keith Brown, president of the New Museum’s board of trustees. “We look forward to inaugurating the new building with the kind of ambitious exhibition for which the New Museum is known, animating our expanded home on the Bowery with a timely exploration of artists’ visions of the future.”
Sign up is quick, easy, & FREE.
