New Museum in NYC to Reopen in March
The contemporary art institution in Manhattan shuttered in 2024 to undergo a 60,000-square-foot expansion.
After a nearly two-year expansion and a delayed reopening, the New Museum in New York City will finally welcome the public again on March 21.
The Manhattan contemporary art museum temporarily shuttered in March 2024 to construct a 60,000-square-foot annex on Bowery that doubles its exhibition space to 20,000 square feet.
Designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture’s partners Rem Koolhaas and Shohei Shigematsu with Cooper Robertson, the new complex uses laminated glass with metal mesh to create a crystalline facade that complements the SANAA-designed flagship without outshining it. Even though the seven-story addition is shorter than the main building at 235 Bowery, it will essentially double its footprint.
Expansion has been a dream of museum officials since 2008, when they purchased the adjacent lot on 231 Bowery. Over the next eight years, they raised $43 million and hired architects to design the project. In 2019, they released renderings, which drew mixed reviews from the public. One anonymous comment on an article about the expansion by the East Village news site EV Grieve called the design “abominable and soulless.”
The renderings once again elicited strong reactions when they were shared on the museum's Instagram in 2024.
New Museum Director Lisa Phillips said in a statement that the museum’s enlargement proves the institution remains committed to “risk-taking, collaboration, and experimentation.”
Now visitors will get to decide for themselves. The museum will offer free admission on March 21 and March 22, and an inaugural exhibition titled New Humans: Memories of the Future, featuring work from more than 200 artists, writers, and thinkers, will explore how technology has changed what it means to be a human being.
Returning art denizens should have more pathways to explore the museum without jamming themselves into the main building’s freight elevator or ascending narrow stairways during the museum’s popular pay-what-you-wish late-night Thursday hours.
The new structure features three floors of exhibition spaces, a floor for NEW INC, the museum’s cultural incubator with collaborative working spaces for 120 creative entrepreneurs, a dedicated artist-in-residence studio, a 74-seat forum, and a sky room taking up the top floor. Three elevators, an atrium stairway, and a new street-level entrance plaza with a much larger lobby and bookstore will help mitigate crowds.
The museum had planned on reopening last fall, but pushed its date back several months. A museum spokesperson did not indicate why the opening date changed, but a spokeswoman with Corgan, the architecture firm that recently acquired Cooper Robertson, said the NYC Department of Buildings requested more information about the building plan exam in September. A Department of Buildings spokesman characterized the process as typical.
“Construction of the New Museum's OMA-designed building expansion is moving quickly towards completion and we look forward to welcoming the public back to the Bowery,” Sarah Morris, a New Museum spokesperson, told Hyperallergic.
