In effect, the museum doubles in size
The New Museum of Contemporary Art was founded in 1977 and has since established itself as a leading institution for contemporary art. It is also one of the few museums with a clear specialisation in digital art and experimental video. The new building project effectively doubles the institution’s total footprint to 11,148 square metres, expanding the museum’s capacity not only for exhibitions, but also for public programmes and a wide range of artist-led initiatives.
The new addition rises vertically, carefully preserving the iconic appearance of the existing building, whose stacked, box-like volumes have become a recognisable landmark. Particular attention has been paid to improving visitor circulation and accessibility throughout the museum. Three new lifts have been added, along with a staircase in the atrium, significantly enhancing vertical movement and helping to create a smoother, more fluid experience across the building.
Until now, access to the galleries relied on a single lift that served both visitors and internal logistics. This awkward internal circulation has often been cited as the Achilles’ heel of an otherwise exemplary design by the Japanese architecture firm SANAA. The expansion directly addresses this long-standing issue, bringing the museum’s infrastructure into line with its ambitions and international standing.
While the new building fully respects the existing structure, it also asserts a distinct design identity of its own. Together, the two volumes are visually unified in a striking way, each supporting and enhancing the other’s architecture. Seven new floors, spanning more than 5,500 square metres, effectively double the museum’s exhibition space, as well as areas dedicated to workshops, lectures and the institution’s wider programme of activities.
The expansion also introduces a new, enlarged and highly impressive entrance, along with artist-in-residence studios designed for temporary stays. The lobby has almost doubled in size, as have the museum’s library and shop. At ground level, the project includes a restaurant designed by Shohei Shigematsu of OMA, which will be adorned with artworks.
The Opening and the Exhibition New Humans: Memories of the Future
The New Museum of Contemporary Art will inaugurate its expansion on 21 May with the exhibition New Humans: Memories of the Future. Conceived as a large-scale thematic show unfolding across the entire building, it brings together more than 200 participants from the fields of art, science, architecture, literature and cinema.
The exhibition explores artists’ enduring engagement with what it means to be human in the face of sweeping technological change. It traces a transversal history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through the work of more than 150 international artists, writers, scientists, architects and filmmakers, highlighting pivotal moments when dramatic technological and social shifts reshaped ideas of humanity and opened up new visions of its possible futures.
At a time when technological advances and their unintended consequences appear to be accelerating at an uncontrollable pace, the exhibition proposes art as a collective form of creative foresight and as a vital self-portrait of the people we may yet become. With the completion of the expansion, the New Museum will stand as the only building in the world to unite the work of two living architects who are both recipients of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.