The New Museum, Manhattan’s only museum dedicated exclusively to contemporary art, reopened its doors to members of its local community, supporters, and elected officials. The 60,000 sq ft building expansion was designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas in collaboration with Executive Architect Cooper Robertson.

OMA’s first cultural institution in New York, a new addition to the Sanaa-designed museum building at 235 Bowery, provides much-needed space for its expanded activities and increasing public ambitions—doubling the program and square footage on a site immediately adjacent to the existing building.

The new building acknowledges a changing role for museums, beyond their function as producers of exhibitions. Today, museums are spaces for public participation, both programmed and unprogrammed, and they can foster new connections and even porousness with the city. The building’s façade reveals the circulation and slices of the activities taking place within its flexible interior and exposes them to the street. The New Museum’s expansion creates an outdoor plaza at the intersection of the Bowery and Prince Street, which invites the public to enter and also acts as a gathering point. The result is an extroverted museum, one that is an extension of a continuous city and that participates in its public life.

The expanded footprint doubles the museum’s gallery space; provides fluid circulation through the addition of three elevators, an Atrium Stair, and an entrance plaza; and introduces new venues for public programs and special events, including an enlarged seventh-floor Sky Room and a new 74-seat Forum. On its upper floors, the expanded building features a dedicated studio for artists-in-residence and a home for the museum’s cultural incubator New Inc. On the ground level, visitors are welcomed into an enlarged lobby, an expanded bookstore, and a full-service restaurant operated by the Oberon Group.

“Marking our first public building in New York City, the project with the New Museum is especially meaningful, an institution whose forward-thinking ethos we have long admired. Building on past collaborations with Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, it has been a privilege to engage in dialogue with their original building, one of the most resonant works of architecture in the city. The completed project stands as both a continuation and an expansion of that legacy," said Rem Koolhaas, Partner-in-Collaboration, OMA.

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery, New York
NY 10002, United States