 New York, NY…Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director, and Saul
Dennison, President of the Board of Trustees, announced today that the
New Museum, one of the nation’s leading showcases for the art of our
time, will open its much-anticipated new building on the Bowery to the
public on Saturday, December 1, 2007.
Coinciding with the institution’s
30th anniversary, the milestone will be celebrated with 30 hours of
continuous free admission to the public sponsored by Target, beginning
at noon on December 1st. New York City officials will preside over a
grand ribbon cutting ceremony at the New Museum on Friday, November
30th.With the inauguration of the building at 235 Bowery, between
Stanton and Rivington Streets at the head of Prince Street, the New
Museum of Contemporary Art will occupy its own freestanding, dedicated
building for the first time in the institution’s history and will be
the first art museum ever built from the ground up in downtown
Manhattan. The seven-story, 60,000 square foot structure — a glimmering
metal mesh-clad stack of boxes shifted off axis in a dynamic
composition — was designed by noted avant garde architects Kazuyo
Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of the Tokyo-based partnership Sejima +
Nishizawa/SANAA. The new New Museum building has been named for
trustees Mitzi Eisenberg and Susan Feinstein and their husbands Warren
Eisenberg and Leonard Feinstein, who together provided the lead gift to
the institution’s now nearly completed $64 million capital campaign.
The New Museum building on the Bowery will have the presence of a
gravity defying sculpture sited at a pivotal geographic and cultural
intersection in New York’s urban fabric, along the storied thoroughfare
where several of the city’s most distinctive communities meet and
generations of artists have lived, worked, and contributed to the
ongoing cultural dialogue of the nation. Clad in a silvery, anodized
expanded aluminum mesh and punctuated by windows and skylights that
offer vistas and vignettes of the city, the building’s form was
conceived to express the ever-changing dynamic of the art and ideas to
be presented within. Dramatic full floor, column-free exhibition spaces
will occupy three main gallery levels. The building will also house a
180-seat theater, classrooms, an education center, and a top-floor
events space with rooftop terraces offering panoramic views of the
city. The broad, light-washed ground floor space — named the Marcia
Tucker Hall in honor of the New Museum’s late founder — will be an
animated public space where visitors will find the Museum’s acclaimed
store, a sleek café, and a glass walled lobby gallery lit by daylight
from a setback above.
These features and spaces will provide a platform for the Museum’s
far-reaching international programs, including exhibitions,
installations, live presentations and performances, public education
programs, and a highly original new global institutional partnership
initiative, Museum as Hub. Director Lisa Phillips said, “It is fitting
that we will celebrate our 30th anniversary of presenting new art and
new ideas with the inauguration of a building that is commensurate with
both the New Museum’s program and the ambitions of the many artists we
showcase. Sejima and Nishizawa have conceived an ideal home for the New
Museum of Contemporary Art — a place that will encourage dialogue and
creativity, catalyze community interaction, and spark a constant
exchange of insights and information. They have truly given form to our
passionate commitment to the importance of art to everyday life. On the
Bowery, the New Museum will continue our exploration of new art and new
ideas with the same energy, openness to experimentation, fearlessness,
and pure excitement that brought us to this remarkable milestone in the
institution’s history.”
|
