By now it would seem that the opening of a new expansion for the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) would be greeted with a stifled yawn. After all, the museum underwent a major renovation and addition 15 years ago. Before that, in 1984, the museum was also enlarged, and smaller additions had taken place in 1964 and 1951. All of this activity occurred on West 53rd Street, after MoMA’s first purpose-built structure was completed there in 1939. Manifest destiny seems to guide its westward expansion, transmogrifying the block from townhouses and low-rise cultural buildings to a canyon of residential towers (two of which helped pay for the museum’s expansions through a special legal mechanism). After Philip Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone’s 1939 foray, other architects have left their imprints, including Philip Johnson, Cesar Pelli, Yoshio Taniguchi, and now Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DSR) in collaboration with Gensler.