New
Museum

Building

The New Museum is temporarily closed to continue construction of our OMA-designed building expansion, anticipated to reopen in early 2025.

Our Next Chapter

The New Museum opened its first purpose-built home in 2007 on the Bowery at the terminus of Prince Street in New York City, designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning firm SANAA / Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa. In November 2022, the New Museum broke ground on a 60,000-square-foot expansion designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas. This new structure will complement and be seamlessly integrated with the Museum’s SANAA-designed flagship building while doubling our exhibition space, creating new venues for artist residencies and public programs, and establishing a permanent home for our cultural incubator NEW INC. To get updates on the new building construction, sign up for our newsletter here.

New Museum Past & Future

Since our founding over forty-five years ago, the New Museum has been a site of experimentation and a hub for new art and new ideas, where risk-taking and discovery are encouraged and supported. We have always been a future-facing museum—not a place for preserving and recording history, but a place where history is made. Founded in 1977 in a temporary space on Hudson Street, the New Museum has continued to act nimbly to present art that serves as a catalyst for dialogue between contemporary artists and the public. We have expanded our footprint at key moments in the Museum’s history to better serve these goals, and this project is the latest chapter in that history.

Our new, ground-up construction will replace 231 Bowery, in which our cultural incubator NEW INC, our new media affiliate Rhizome, and artists’ residencies have been housed, and make these programs more accessible to the public. In this new building designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas, the New Museum will continue to make history.

Building Expansion

The seven-story, 60,000-square-foot building will double the Museum’s exhibition spaces. Merging with current galleries on the Second, Third, and Fourth Floors, the OMA building will align ceiling heights to achieve connectivity between the buildings with additional space dedicated to community and education programs, including a permanent home for the New Museum’s art and technology incubator NEW INC. Further cementing the New Museum’s centrality to the cultural fabric of downtown Manhattan, the OMA expansion features a new public plaza at the intersection of the Bowery and Prince Street that will host art installations, performances, and gatherings. With this vastly expanded footprint and dynamic accessibility, the new building will exponentially increase our impact.

The OMA design will improve vertical circulation for visitors with the addition of an atrium stairway, which will offer views of the surrounding neighborhood and the opportunity for innovative art installations. The stairway and new entry will align with the terminus of Prince Street, opening the Museum to the city with a visual invitation to enter and climb to the top of a world of cultural possibilities. The OMA building will also provide more public spaces and services, including an expanded lobby, a larger bookstore, an upper-level forum for education and public programs that will connect to the existing Sky Room, an artist studio, and a new eighty-seat restaurant. In addition, it will feature three additional elevators—two of which will be dedicated to gallery access—as well as more efficient organization of vital back-of-house, storage, and office space.

The façade—made from laminated glass with metal mesh—will provide a simple, unified exterior adjacent to the SANAA building by using materials that recall and complement the original façade while allowing for a higher degree of transparency. The OMA building will communicate the activities of the Museum outward, while creating an inviting presence that also draws the public inward.

Architects

We are thrilled to work with OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas to design this new building that addresses our current and future needs. The New Museum expansion will also be OMA’s first public building in New York. Known for their civic passion and future thinking, OMA has created a design that complements and respects the integrity of the Museum’s SANAA-designed flagship building and provides seamless connectivity between the two buildings, expanded space for our world-renowned exhibitions, and increased access to our most innovative programs.

Stay Connected!

For the latest updates about the new building, sign up for our newsletter here.

Campaign

The New Museum gratefully acknowledges the many individuals, foundations, corporations, and government agencies for their tremendously generous support of our building campaign. These names are displayed on our permanent donor wall in the Lobby of the New Museum with our sincerest gratitude.

The new New Museum is made possible by a grant from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is funded through Community Development Block Grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

New York State Governor Eliot R. Spitzer
New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
LMDC Chairman Avi Shick
LMDC President David Emil

City of New York, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Commissioner Kate D. Levin
New York City Department of Design and Construction, Commissioner David J. Burney, AIA
New York City Council, Speaker Christine C. Quinn

Get Updates

We want to hear from you!

Help us improve our website by taking a 5-minute survey with a chance to win $100!

Take Survey
Back to mobile site