New Museum opening OMA-designed expansion this fall
Rendering of the expanded New Museum. All images courtesy of OMA/bloomimages.de
The expansion of the New Museum will finally open its doors on the Lower East Side this fall. Designed by OMA’s Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas in collaboration with Cooper Robertson, the 60,000-square-foot, seven-story addition—the architecture firm’s first public building in New York City—connects to the existing building, doubling its gallery space and improving visitor flow. The project includes a permanent home for the museum’s cultural incubator NEW INC, a new outdoor plaza, and full-service restaurant.
First announced in 2017, the expansion project replaces an existing property at 231 Bowery purchased by the museum in 2008. The design complements the New Museum’s adjacent SANAA-designed flagship building on the Bowery at Prince Street.
Compared to the flagship building’s “hermetic” design, the OMA-designed expansion offers a more transparent, angular counterpoint, using laminated glass with metal mesh to “recall and complement” SANAA’s facade while improving visibility, as 6sqft previously reported.
Ceiling heights on the second, third, and fourth floors will be aligned to create “uninterrupted connectivity” across both buildings, while an atrium stairway offers views of the surrounding neighborhood and allows for site-specific art installations. Three new elevators will further enhance circulation, with two dedicated to gallery access.
On the ground level, visitors will find a spacious lobby, an expanded bookstore, a full-service restaurant, and a new entrance plaza for public art installations at the intersection of Bowery and Prince Street.
“The New Museum is an incubator for new cultural perspectives and production, and the expansion aims to embody that attitude of openness,” Shohei Shigematsu, partner at OMA, said. “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.”
Shigematsu continued: “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.”
The upper floors will host a dedicated studio for artists-in-residence, a 74-seat forum, and a “purpose-built” home for NEW INC, the museum’s cultural incubator, which will offer its annual class of more than 120 creative entrepreneurs collaborative work spaces and cutting-edge production facilities.
The museum’s seventh-floor Sky Room will double in size while keeping its panoramic views of downtown Manhattan, and the expanded building will feature three additional upper-floor terraces overlooking the Bowery.
An inaugural exhibition, “New Humans: Memories of the Future,” will celebrate the expansion’s opening by exploring artists’ “enduring preoccupation” with what it means to be human amidst rapid technological development.
Spanning the entire museum, the exhibition will follow a “diagonal history” of the 20th and 21st centuries through the work of more than 150 international artists, writers, scientists, architects, and filmmakers, covering key historical moments where dramatic technological and societal changes influenced new perceptions of humanity and visions for its future.
Featured artists include Sofia Al-Maria, Lucy Beech, Meriem Bennani, Cyprien Gaillard, Pierre Huyghe, Tau Lewis, and more, alongside works by 20th-century cultural figures such as Francis Bacon, Constant Nieuwenhuys, Salvador Dalí, and Ibrahim El-Salahi.
In addition to “New Humans,” the expanded museum will reopen with multiple site-specific commissions designed specifically for the new architectural spaces. Highlights include a new work called “VENUS VICTORIA” by Sarah Lucas—the first recipient of the prestigious Hostetler/Wrigley Sculpture Award.
The expansion will also feature an OMA-designed restaurant, the first full-service eatery designed by the firm in the United States. Helmed by chef Julia Sherman, the 100-seat all-day cafe will incorporate sustainable materials and practices into its menu and design, drawing inspiration from local growers and purveyors and ingredients from the Hudson Valley.
Patrons can look forward to artful dish presentation courtesy of Sherman, as well as a creative cocktail menu curated by Arley Marks featuring classic martinis, spritzes, and botanical non-alcoholic selections. The wine list will feature natural selections of back vintages mainly from regenerative wine growers.
Founded in 1977 in a temporary space on Hudson Street, the New Museum has since evolved as a hub for new art and new ideas, standing as Manhattan’s only museum dedicated exclusively to contemporary art.
The building is being named in honor of the late philanthropist Toby Devan Lewis, a long-time New Museum trustee whose $30 million donation is the largest in the museum’s history.
More details about the museum’s programming will be revealed in the coming months.
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