After being closed to the public for about a year, Manhattan’s New Museum will reopen this fall with more than double the gallery space and a sweeping exhibition featuring the work of more than 150 artists. The long-awaited reopening follows the New Museum’s temporary closure to the public last March for the $82 million construction of an adjacent seven-story extension.
Designed by Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas of the firm OMA in collaboration with architect Cooper Robertson, the new 60,000-square-foot building at 231 Bowery will appear, on its exterior, as a distinctly separate polygonal counterpart juxtaposing the existing multi-tiered museum, composed of laminated glass merged with metal meshing that will allow for a transparent view of its facilities during evening hours.
Inside, the new building will connect to the pre-established structure without interruption, expanding the museum’s second-, third-, and fourth-floor galleries by 9,600 square feet and extending the ground-floor lobby and seventh-floor panoramic skyroom spaces.
Initial renderings of the museum prompted some critical responses online by those who characterized the addition as “hostile” and “corporate,” and compared the design to something that “would look more in place on a prostate MRI than on the Bowery.” Some local Lower East Siders also expressed dissatisfaction with the new building, describing it as an “oversized hulk” and “out of character” for the neighborhood.
The expansion will also house venues for artist residencies and public programming, extra elevators and upper-floor terraces overlooking the Bowery, a full-service restaurant, and the “NEW INC” cultural incubator, with working spaces and production facilities for over 120 emerging entrepreneurs participating in the annual program.
Right: Precious Okoyomon, “Lamb Girl” (2024) (© Precious Okoyomon, photo by Benedetta Mascalchi)
To inaugurate its new look, the New Museum will reopen to the public with the exhibition New Humans: Memories of the Future, exploring the ever-morphing relationship between humanity and technological evolution across the 20th and 21st centuries.
Though a complete list of artists included in the show has not yet been released, the museum confirmed that contemporary works Daria Martin, Philippe Parreno, and Wangechi Mutu will be in dialogue with pieces by historical artists including Francis Bacon, Salvador Dalí, and Kiki Kogelnik.
Alongside the exhibition, spanning three floors of the museum, there will be multiple site-specific commissions including a work entitled “VENUS VICTORIA” by Sarah Lucas, who is the inaugural recipient of the biannual Hostetler/Wrigley Sculpture Award. The prize, which aims to support the production of new sculpture by women artists, will provide recipients with a $400,000 grant to create an installation and exhibition on the museum’s soon-to-be completed public plaza on the Bowery.