The New Museum, Manhattan’s only museum dedicated exclusively to contemporary art, announced that its 5,574 m2 (60,000 sf) building expansion designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas in collaboration with Cooper Robertson will open in fall 2025.
Founded in 1977 in a temporary space on Hudson Street, the New Museum has experimented and evolved since its founding as a hub for new art and new ideas, expanding its footprint at key moments in its history to better serve artists and the public. Its OMA-designed expansion will complement the New Museum’s existing 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 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 NEW INC, among many other new and expanded features, marking a transformative moment for the Museum and the city.
Complementing the New Museum’s existing architecture, the OMA-designed expansion will appear distinct on the outside while being seamlessly integrated on the inside. The new 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 OMA design will improve vertical circulation for visitors through the addition of an atrium stairway, which will offer views of the surrounding neighborhood and the opportunity for site-specific art installations, as well as three additional elevators, two of which will be dedicated to gallery access.
“The New Museum is an incubator for new cultural perspectives and production, and the expansion aims to embody that attitude of openness,” said Shohei Shigematsu, OMA Partner. “Imagined as a highly connected yet distinct counterpart to the existing museum’s verticality and solidity, the new building will offer horizontally expansive galleries for curatorial variety, open vertical circulation, and a diversity of spaces for gathering, exchange, and creation. The building is further shaped to create an active public face—including an outdoor plaza at the ground, moments of transparency throughout the central atrium, and terraced openings at the top that will openly engage the surrounding community and beyond.”
The OMA building will be named in honor of the 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. To date, the New Museum has raised $118 million towards its Capital Campaign goal of $125 million, with $82 million in construction costs.
