$20 million naming gift from Toby Devan Lewis brings new museum closer to completion
The New Museum broke ground in November 2022 on a major building expansion designed by OMA, in collaboration with Cooper Robertson, Executive Architect.
The Museum’s $111.8 million Capital Campaign has majority support from the Board of Trustees and the City and State of New York.
The most significant gift in the institution’s history comes from Toby Devan Lewis, a longtime trustee and exceptional philanthropist.
The Museum will recognize Lewis’s leadership role by naming the OMA building in her honor.
Since its founding over 45 years ago, the New Museum has been a site of experimentation and a hub for new art and new ideas, where risk-taking and discovery are encouraged and supported.
It has always been a future-facing museum—not a place for preserving and recording history, but a place where history is made.
Founded in 1977 in a temporary space on Hudson Street, the New Museum has continued to act nimbly to present art that catalyzes dialogue between contemporary artists and the public. They have expanded their footprint at key moments in the Museum’s history to better serve these goals; this project is the latest chapter in that story.
The new, ground-up construction replaces 231 Bowery, where the cultural incubator, NEW INC, new media affiliate Rhizome, and artists’ residencies have been housed.
This new building, designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas, will make these programs more accessible to the public. The New Museum will continue to make history in this new building.
The seven-story, 60,000-square-foot building will double the museum’s exhibition spaces.
With current galleries on the second, third, and fourth floors, the OMA building will align ceiling heights to connect the buildings with additional space dedicated to community and education programs, including a permanent home for NEW INC.
Further cementing the New Museum’s centrality to the cultural fabric of downtown Manhattan, the OMA expansion features a new public plaza at the intersection of the Bowery and Prince Street that will host art installations, performances, and gatherings.
With this vastly expanded footprint and dynamic accessibility, the new building will exponentially increase our community impact.
The OMA design will improve vertical circulation for museum visitors by adding an atrium staircase. The staircase will offer views of the surrounding neighborhood and the opportunity for innovative art installations.
The stairway and new entry will align with the terminus of Prince Street, opening up the museum to the city with a visual invitation to enter the building and climb to the top of a world of cultural possibilities.
The OMA building will also provide more public spaces and services, including an expanded lobby, a larger bookstore, an upper-level forum for education, and public programs connecting to the existing Sky Room, an artist studio, and a new eighty-seat restaurant.
In addition, it will feature three additional elevators—two of which will be dedicated to gallery access—as well as more efficient organization of vital back-of-house, storage, and office space.
Made out of laminated glass with metal mesh, the façade will provide a simple, unified exterior adjacent to the SANAA building by using materials that recall and complete
ment the original façade while allowing for more transparency. The OMA building will communicate the museum’s activities outward, creating an inviting presence that draws the public inward.