New York museums plan new life for architectural icon

New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art are teaming up to ensure the continued vitality of the former’s iconic Marcel Breuer-designed building at 945 Madison Ave, it was announced May 11. The Whitney Museum is proceeding with plans to move to a new downtown location at Gansevoort St in the Meatpacking district, with the ground-breaking for a building there scheduled for May 24. Under the terms of the agreement with the Met, the Met will take over use of the Whitney’s Madison Ave facilities once the new downtown building is completed in 2015, gaining additional space for exhibitions, lectures and other programming with a Modern and contemporary art focus. The Whitney will retain parts of the uptown building for storage, and the two institutions plan to collaborate on collections sharing, publications and educational activities. Site-specific works from the Whitney collection will also remain on display on a permanent basis.

The Whitney’s Breuer building opened in 1966 following locations at W 54th St (from 1954) and W 8th St (from the museum’s inception in 1930). The Whitney has spent decades seeking to expand its current facilities, but numerous proposals by architects including Michael Graves, Rem Koolhaas and Renzo Piano to build on the Breuer building had met resistance from the neighborhood community board, leading the museum to seek an alternate location altogether. According to a New York Times article from 2010, the Gansevoort St location was acquired at half the appraised value from the city government. The site allows room for a 200,000-square-foot building designed by Renzo Piano, which will cost around USD 200 million to build. In a statement to the press, New York City mayor Michael R Bloomberg lauded the agreement with the Met, saying, “Even after the Whitney opens its new downtown home, the historic Breuer building will continue to serve as an exceptional venue for exhibitions, lectures and gallery tours, benefitting the millions of New Yorkers and visitors from around the world who enjoy world-class arts programming.”

The agreement between the Whitney and the Met is effective for an initial period of eight years, with the possibility of extending the agreement for a longer term.

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