New York City has many museums within its five boroughs, but The New Museum,  Manhattan’s only museum dedicated exclusively to contemporary art, is the talk of the town these days as it moves closer to opening its 60,000-square-foot building expansion this fall. The expansion was designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas, in collaboration with Cooper Robertson.

© Courtesy of OMA / bloomimagesde

Originally founded in 1977 in a temporary space on New York City’s Hudson Street, The New Museum evolved since its founding as a hub for new art and ideas. The OMA-designed expansion will complement New Museum’s existing Tokyo-based, SANAA-designed flagship building on the Bowery at Prince Street, while doubling the museum’s gallery space; improving visitor flow through the addition of three new elevators, an atrium stair and an entrance plaza; creating new venues for artist residencies and public programs; and establishing a purpose-built home for the museum’s cultural incubator called NEW INC.

“The New Museum has always been a future-facing museum, not a place for preserving and recording history, but a place where history is made,” said Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis director, New Museum. “We are thrilled to be working with Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas on OMA’s first public building in New York City, ushering in a new era of possibilities for the New Museum as a vital civic resource for New Yorkers and the global arts community.”

© Courtesy of OMA / bloomimagesde

The OMA building will be named in honor of late visionary philanthropist Toby Devan Lewis, a long-serving New Museum trustee whose $30-million contribution to the Capital Campaign is the largest gift in the museum’s history.

The OMA-designed expansion will appear distinct on the outside while being seamlessly integrated on the inside. The seven-story building will double the museum’s 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 through the addition of an atrium stairway, offering views of the surrounding neighborhood.

© Courtesy of OMA

On the ground level, the museum’s enlarged lobby will feature an expanded bookstore as well as a full-service restaurant helmed by Julia Sherman, chef and author of Salad for President: A Cookbook Inspired by Artists. This will be the first full-service restaurant designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu in the United States. The 100-seat space will be a zero-waste, all-day café and restaurant spotlighting vegetables and local seafood, drawing inspiration from local purveyors and growers, and focusing on ingredients from the Hudson Valley.

New Museum’s seventh-floor Sky Room will double in size while retaining its panoramic views of downtown Manhattan, and the expanded building will include three additional upper-floor terraces overlooking the Bowery. On the exterior, laminated glass with metal mesh will provide a simple, unified façade by using materials that recall and complement the original SANAA building while allowing for a higher degree of transparency.

© Courtesy of OMA / bloomimagesde

Spanning the entire museum, the first exhibition, called New Human, will trace a diagonal history of the 20^th and 21^st centuries through the work of more than 150 international artists, writers, scientists, architects and filmmakers, highlighting key moments when dramatic technological and societal changes spurred new conceptions of humanity and new visions for its possible futures. Major support for New Humans is provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

In addition to New Humans, the expanded New Museum will reopen with multiple, site-specific commissions enabled by new architectural spaces. Among these will be a new work entitled VENUS VICTORIA by Sarah Lucas as the first recipient of the Hostetler/Wrigley Sculpture Award, a biannual juried prize supporting the production and exhibition of new work by women artists on the museum’s public entrance plaza.