After nearly two years of closure and a planning process that lasted a decade, the New Museum in New York is preparing to reopen on March 21. The announcement was reported by the U.S. outlet Artnet News, which described the project as “one of the most closely watched museum projects in the U.S.” And it is not wrong: the reopening and expansion of the Lower East Side museum could be the most anticipated museum development of the past decade. It is also one of the most expensive, considering that the intervention cost approximately 82 million dollars, financed mainly through a private fundraising campaign supported by donors, foundations, and members of the museum’s board.

The New York Times reported on the architectural project in detail, with a feature in the Arts section that frames the story around the idea of a “new New Museum”: not simply an architectural expansion, but a true redefinition of the institution and its role within New York’s cultural scene. The project, designed by Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas (OMA) together with the Cooper Robertson studio, intervenes on the original building designed in 2007 by SANAA, reorganizing its spaces and significantly expanding its functions, while also suggesting a possible evolution of the museum’s curatorial direction.

First and foremost, the intervention consists of an expansion with the construction of a new wing of the museum: about 5,500 square meters of new spaces including exhibition galleries, educational areas, studios for artists in residence, and infrastructure dedicated to welcoming the public.

The new wing develops over seven floors, aligning the ceiling heights on the second, third, and fourth floors to generate continuity between the two buildings. The exterior, made of laminated glass with metal mesh, was also designed to complete the Sanaa structure in a cohesive way through more permeable façades, which make the museum’s internal activities visible and therefore strengthen its dialogue with the Bowery neighborhood.

The new building will also host the permanent headquarters of NEW INC, the incubator program launched by the museum in 2014 to support projects at the intersection of art, design, technology, and cultural entrepreneurship, often cited by the American press as one of the first museum incubators dedicated to the creative industries.

The result is a rare architectural dialogue between two studios led by Pritzker Prize–winning architects: on the one hand the stacking of metal volumes conceived by Sanaa, which over the years has become one of the city’s most recognizable museum buildings; on the other hand OMA’s new structure, which accompanies its verticality while introducing a more open and transparent presence.

From a functional point of view, the project also addresses some of the limitations of the original building: new vertical circulation systems, with additional elevators and a larger staircase, improve flows between the levels and allow greater flexibility in the use of the galleries. The expansion also includes modular exhibition spaces, a bookstore, a Sky Room on the seventh floor, and a central staircase that connects to a new entrance plaza. More than a simple increase in surface area, the goal of the intervention was to transform the museum into a multidisciplinary platform capable of hosting a broader and more simultaneous program.

Criticism, however, has not been absent. In an article dedicated to the reopening, the New York outlet Observer emphasized that the expansion comes after years of delays, design revisions, and a long fundraising process that has accompanied almost the entire last decade of the institution’s life. Some commentators have also observed how the architectural intervention coincides with a moment of transition for the museum: the reopening takes place while the long-time director Lisa Phillips, who has led the New Museum since 1999, prepares to leave the position during the course of 2026.

For this very reason, according to Observer, the new building risks being perceived as a symbolic passage between two phases in the museum’s history: on the one hand the institution that in the 2000s established itself as one of New York’s main spaces dedicated to emerging artistic research; on the other a museum that is now trying to redefine its identity in an increasingly competitive cultural ecosystem dominated by much larger institutions.

As anticipated by several U.S. outlets, including Artforum and The Art Newspaper, the new complex will open with the large group exhibition curated by Massimiliano Gioni, “New Humans: Memories of the Future”. The project will bring together more than 150 artists, writers, scientists, and filmmakers — including Tau Lewis, Hito Steyerl, Precious Okoyomon, Anicka Yi, Pierre Huyghe, but also Salvador Dalí, Francis Bacon, Hannah Höch, and El Lissitzky — to reflect on the “predictive” role of art, tracing a history that highlights the major techno-social transformations that have generated new conceptions of humanity and the future between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The exhibition’s framework also reflects the institution’s new curatorial orientation. For the New York Times it is a show that speaks “to humans, robots, and everything in between,” emphasizing how the New Museum is positioning itself as a place of reflection on the transformations of the human condition in the age of advanced technologies and artificial intelligence.

Accompanying the reopening of the museum will also be a series of site-specific commissions, including an intervention by Tschabalala Self on the façade, a work by Sarah Lucas in the entrance plaza, and a large sculpture by Klára Hosnedlová in the atrium.

Opening image: Exterior View. Rendering of the expanded New Museum. Courtesy OMA/bloomimages.de