On October 21, New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) shows off its new girth with the public opening of its expanded and renovated galleries, by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler. The current $450-million redo, 15 years after one designed by Yoshio Taniguchi (RECORD, January 2005), marks the latest in a series of additions and reconfigurations that MoMA has undertaken since 1939, when it first moved into the new museum it commissioned at 11 West 53rd Street in Manhattan. Up from the previous 128,000 square feet of gallery space, the museum will now claim 166,00 square feet (and a total of 708,000 square feet overall for the institution). MoMA is one big momma—and while it covers a large chunk of its city block, it is now hemmed in from further expanding its footprint by an office tower to the west and a church to the east.
The museum’s mission to show its impressive collection of historic modern art, as well as contemporary work, has long propelled its growth. But ongoing acquisitions—and the additional imperative to include more art of other cultures, ethnicities, and genders—dictated expansion. In a shift of strategy, the museum also decided to reorganize galleries across disciplines so that painting, photography, film, drawing, and design can now rub shoulders in the same spaces, and reinforce certain thematic ties.
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