The New Museum, New York City’s only dedicated contemporary art museum, is gearing up for its next phase of expansion as part of its 40th anniversary celebrations. It was announced yesterday that design architects Rem Koolhaas and Shohei Shigematsu of OMA have been selected to lead the project.
The forthcoming expansion will double the Museum’s footprint, adding 50,000-square-feet for additional exhibition galleries, improved public circulation and flexible space for various experimental programs likes its business incubator. OMA will design the new building on the adjacent, six-story property at 231 Bowery, a site purchased by the Museum in 2008.
“OMA is a great choice for our next building,” said Lisa Phillips, the Museum’s first director. “Koolhaas has thought deeply about the identity and landscape of our city going back to his landmark book Delirious New York, published in 1978, a year after the Museum’s founding. Though he is one of the world’s finest architects with a deeply civic and public spirit, this will be his first public building in New York City.”
According to a press release, the new facility will “complement and respect the integrity” of the Museum’s flagship building, designed by Japanese firm SANAA.
The project is scheduled to break ground in 2019 and will be funded by an $85 million capital campaign. According to Phillips, the Museum has raised more than 50 percent of the cost.
“Building upon four decades of fostering new art and new ideas, the Board embraces this next chapter in the Museum’s history, which will provide artists and curators the space to experiment and grow in new ways,” said James Keith Brown, President, New Museum Board of Trustees.
