The New Museum, Manhattan’s only museum dedicated exclusively to contemporary art, will undergo an expansion designed by OMA Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas in collaboration with Cooper Robertson.
The 5,574-m2 (60,000-sf) expansion will complement the New Museum’s existing flagship building, double the museum’s gallery space, improve 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 establish a purpose-built home for the museum’s cultural hub NEW INC, among many other new and expanded features.
The upper floors will include a dedicated studio for artists-in-residence, a 74-seat forum, and a home for NEW INC, the first museum-born cultural incubator.
The new seven-story building will also double the gallery space, aligning ceiling heights on the second, third, and fourth floors for uninterrupted connectivity across both buildings. The design will improve vertical circulation for visitors by adding an atrium stairway, which will offer views of the surrounding neighborhood, as well as three additional elevators, two of which will be dedicated to gallery access.
On the exterior of the terrace, laminated glass with metal mesh will provide a simple, unified facade.
The expanded museum is set to open in fall of 2025.
