Archinect - News

Michael Kimmelman goes in search of Paul Rudolph’s true legacy at the Met

2024-10-17T18:17:00-04:00

He’s now the subject of a modest but riveting retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, organized by Abraham Thomas, called 'Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph,' whose first order of business is obviously to answer a question people outside architecture circles will ask, namely: Who was he?

The exhibition, the Met’s first major show on modern architecture in almost fifty years, opened on September 30th and includes over 80 artifacts from the Kentucky-born Rudolph’s five-decade career. The last day to see this is March 16th, 2025.

Kimmelman says it offers an interesting recount of how the "shining light of the Kennedy era" morphed into league with the originator of his failed Lower Manhattan Expressway plan, Robert Moses, bemoaning "his grand plans and recklessness, his truculence and tragic arc."

Peterson Rich Office will lead major renovation of the Met's key public areas

2023-12-01T17:09:00-05:00

Peterson Rich Office (PRO) has been announced as the architect of a major renovation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City that will overhaul its Fifth Avenue entrance, gift shop, and other public areas over a period of several years.

The Met says this work will be conducted in two phases: the new gallery will be enacted first near the Great Hall, followed by the renovation of the outside plaza area and a reconfiguration of existing dining areas.

The gallery will be completed in 2026, resulting in an 11,500-square-foot space for The Costume Institute’s annual spring show and other curatorial activities. The former employee's entrance at 83rd Street and Fifth Avenue will also be remade to allow better public access to the building. Beyer Blinder Belle is attached to the project as the executive architect, following their renovation of the museum’s European paintings galleries that was completed this month.

Related on Archinect: The Met's Jhaelen Hernandez-Eli details hi...

The Met's Jhaelen Hernandez-Eli details his work as Vice President of Capital Projects to the New York Times

2023-11-15T19:24:00-05:00

The New York Times recently spoke to Jhaelen Hernandez-Eli about his work as the Vice President of Capital Projects for NYC's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A Harvard GSD alum and former Associate Principal at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Hernandez-Eli had previously worked in design and construction for the New York City Economic Development Corporation before joining the institution, where he is now responsible for a $2 billion capital improvements initiative that will prove to be one of the defining aspects of Director Max Hollein's tenure.

“The emphasis on environmental performance and dealing with the climate crisis is not separate and apart from the discussion around aesthetics,” Hernandez-Eli told NYT Art & Culture contributor Ted Loos last month. “I think that oftentimes those two things get divorced. You’re either focused on what a thing looks like or how a thing performs. Our argument here is that they’re not mutually exclusive, they’re merged.”

Previously on Archinect: Frida E...

The Met unveils designs for new children's learning center ahead of September opening

2023-06-14T18:49:00-04:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has set a date for the opening of the new 81st Street Studio children’s education space created by KOKO Architecture + Design.

This September 9th will see the daylong dedication festival for the new learning center, which takes over a renovated space in the museum’s Harold D. Uris Center for Education. The 3,500-square-foot design will offer free activities to children ages 3–11 and their caregivers, offering itself as an “interactive space that reimagines how the Museum can inspire exploration of its encyclopedic collection, amplify curiosity, and create new experiences for The Met’s youngest visitors.”

Museum director Max Hollein says: ”This is a project that was made possible by so many and with strong support to create something unique for our younger audiences.”

Rendering: Brick Visual. Image: KOKO Architecture + Design, courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Education is a critical — and very exciting — part of The Met’s mission, ...

The Met announces Nairy Baghramian for its Fall 2023 Facade Commission

2023-04-11T13:57:00-04:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced Iranian-born German artist Nairy Baghramian as the next participant in its Fall 2023 Facade Commission series.

Baghramian follows Carol Bove, Wangechi Mutu, and last year’s Hew Locke for the fourth installment of the series, which first began in 2019 under the auspices of museum Director Max Hollein.

The museum says: “These projects are the latest in The Met’s series of contemporary commissions in which the Museum invites artists to create new works of art, establishing a dialogue between the artist's practice, The Met collection, the physical Museum, and The Met's audiences.”

Baghramian, also the winner of the 2022 Nasher Prize, will install four abstract polychromatic sculptures as part of the commission. Working in the blank niches left behind after Richard Hunt Morris was unable to complete his work on the museum in 1902, the sculptures are said to have components that evoke images of flotsam and will be titled Scratching the Back.

R...

Frida Escobedo speaks to Vogue on her plans for The Met expansion

2023-03-24T12:24:00-04:00

One year after acclaimed Mexican architect Frida Escobedo replaced David Chipperfield as the designer for the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art's $500 million modern and contemporary wing extension, Escobedo has spoken to Vogue about her vision fo the scheme. When completed, the project is expected to comprise 80,000 square feet of more accessible galleries and public spaces.

“My first thoughts were that this wing is quite isolated,” Escobedo told Vogue’s Dodie Kazanjian on a tour of the existing museum. “It feels like a separate part of the museum, and the question is, how can we integrate it more?”

While Escobedo is not due to present a design concept until June, she revealed to Vogue that her vision for the scheme will include some form of alteration to the building’s orientation. “Right now, the building is facing just one way, Fifth Avenue — the grand staircase, the Great Hall, and you can go in three directions to Egypt, to Greece, and to Europe,” Escobedo told the magazine....

Artist Hew Locke will activate the Met facade with a quartet of trophy-like reflections on the museum's history and collection

2022-04-11T15:31:00-04:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced that Hew Locke will be the next artist featured in its provocative Facade Commission series.

The Guyanese-British artist’s effort is titled “Gilt” and will follow recent interventions by Carol Bove and Wangechi Mutu for the third version of the commission, which was begun in 2019 as the museum looked for new ways to engage its collections, history, and neoclassical exterior with the public and its newfound mandate for institutional self-reflection.

Hew Locke. Photo copyright Danny Cozens, 2020.

Architect Richard Hunt Morris was never fully able to realize his vision for the museum’s facade by the time of its completion in 1902. As a result, four extended niches were left empty until the commission began and will now showcase a quartet of trophy-like sculptures from Locke that are “informed by [his] deep knowledge of the Met’s collection and […] reference the institution in ways both direct and indirect,” according to Director Max Hollein....

Designing for The Met: How hiring the right exhibition designers impacts the changing nature of museums

2022-03-30T20:00:00-04:00

New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art has made several big announces these past few months: From news of a $500 million wing expansion designed by Frida Escobedo, an upcoming rooftop installation from artist Lauren Halsey, to the museum's Ancient Near East and Cypriot Art gallery renovation led by NADAAA and Moody Nolan, The Met is setting its sights on what 2022 and beyond will bring.

Learning from the pandemic and the socio-economical events of 2020 and 2021, museum and exhibition design continues to evolve and change, hopefully for the better. As cultural institutions across the globe continue to reopen and prepare for another year of exhibitions, many dare to ask what the future of exhibition design will look like. Who are the future exhibition designers? What does it take for motivated individuals to work for one of today's leading museums?

The Met's "In America: A Lexicon of Fashion" exhibition. Depicted is a dress designed by international fashion designer and design a...

NADAAA chosen to lead $40 million renovation of the Met's Ancient Near East and Cypriot Art galleries

2022-03-16T14:17:00-04:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has appointed Boston architect Nadaaa to the $40m reconfiguring of a suite of its galleries. The practice, led by principal designer Nader Tehrani, will work with Moody Nolan, the US’s largest African-American-owned and -managed practice, as architect of record on the 15,000sq ft project. The pair will undertake the complete renovation of the Met’s galleries for Ancient Near Eastern and Cypriot Art which currently occupy 11 rooms on the second floor.

As detailed by The Met, the renovation will introduce architectural and design elements that reflect both the materials and geographic origins of the work on view. This will be evident in the Ancient Near Eastern Art galleries, which will be characterized by a series of architectural backdrops that reflect the materials used in the works such as clay, copper, bronze, gold, silver, and lapis lazuli.

The renovation will unite the formerly separated collection areas, reflecting areas of interconnection between their cultures. The new gallery space will employ an open floor plan in order to establish a sense of scale and grandeur. It will feature vistas that open to the Great Hall Balcony and surrounding collections. This work also meets the museum’s strategy to reduce its carbon footprint, as it aims to reduce energy consumption in this area by around 40%. The new galleries are scheduled to open in 2025.

Local LA hero Lauren Halsey’s Met rooftop installation will focus on utopian architecture, Afrofuturism, and community

2022-03-15T20:36:00-04:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced the commission of artist Lauren Halsey for the tenth edition of its popular annual Roof Garden Commission series with a new work titled the eastside of south central los angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture (I).

The 34-year-old artist’s temporary installation will feature an inhabitable structure that at once weaves the museum’s ample holdings of Egyptian art with elements of her own personal history and visual inventory in order to create a “monument to living architecture” overlooking Central Park and Fifth Avenue.

Halsey is known for inspiring work that examines the shifting dynamic between architecture and community-building as influenced by her upbringing in and around South Central Los Angeles. Her installation is thus taken from the desire to produce, as Met director Max Hollein put it, “a powerful form of documentation” that engages with the history, iconography, and local material culture of the neighborhood remixed with ele...

Frida Escobedo has replaced David Chipperfield on the Met's $500 million modern and contemporary wing expansion

2022-03-14T14:56:00-04:00

Change at the top of the museum world as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced Mexican architect Frida Escobedo as its new designer of the forthcoming Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing for modern and contemporary art.

Escobedo now officially replaces David Chipperfield, who had been selected by then-director Thomas Campbell in 2015. An announcement from the museum noted that the new wing will encompass some 80,000 square feet of more accessible galleries and public space all made possible by the Tang’s contribution to the nearly $500 million total cost.

The 42-year-old’s work has thus far been defined most notably by her 2018 design for the Serpentine Pavilion and through her eponymous Mexico City-based practice, which has authored a wide range of projects that include everything from historic renovation of an iconic hotel in Acapulco to investigations into the lives of domestic workers in Mexico City, among other standout projects. Escobedo has held teaching ...

Frick Collection opens in Marcel Breuer-designed temporary new home, Frick Madison

2021-03-23T18:07:00-04:00

While the Frick Collection's Gilded Age mansion in Manhattan undergoes a $160-million expansion and renovation project led by Selldorf Architects with Executive Architect Beyer Blinder Belle, highlights of the substantial art collection have found a temporary new home for the next two years inside Marcel Breuer's iconic Brutalist building on Madison Avenue.

The modernist Marcel Breuer building on Madison Ave just opened as the temporary art venue, Frick Madison. Photo: Joe Coscia.

The selection of works shown, and freshly juxtaposed within its unexpected new setting at Frick Madison, includes treasured paintings and sculptures by Bellini, Clodion, Gainsborough, Goya, Holbein, Houdon, Ingres, Piero della Francesca, Rembrandt, Titian, Turner, Velázquez, Vermeer, Whistler, and many others.

Frick Madison exterior. Photo: Joe Coscia

"The Frick has created a sequence of gallery spaces at Frick Madison that reflects the museum’s traditional emphasis on intimate encounters with both art and a...

The Met is hiring its first Native North American Art curator

2019-09-16T15:45:00-04:00

The successful candidate will be tasked with overseeing the museum’s vast collection of indigenous American artifacts, including the Charles and Valerie Diker Collection of more than 116 objects hailing from 50 different Native American cultures, from the 2nd century to the early 20th century. [...] The commitment to hire the new curator also came as part of the Diker gift.

In a recent job listing on the American Alliance of Museums website, The Met in NYC appears to be hiring its first full-time Native North American art curator to lead the museum's new Native Arts program, artnet News reported earlier this month. Hiring the new curator is part of the museum's efforts to revamp its approach to Native American art and culture.

The job listing (which has since been removed) states that the chosen candidate would be in charge of establishing “‘demonstrable connections with descendent communities’ and the ability to ‘develop robust collaborations and partnerships with Indigenous community members,’” Smithsonian.com reports.

Frank Lloyd Wright Textiles on Display at The Met

2019-08-07T11:54:00-04:00

Can architects design wallpaper as arresting as their building facades? In 1955, celebrated architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose buildings received UNESCO protected status last month, launched a range of affordable home products for the general public which included a line of fabrics, wallpapers, furniture and paint. An exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York showcases these creations.

wHY Architecture to design the Met's ambitious $70 million Rockefeller Wing renovation

2018-11-21T14:04:00-05:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is moving forward with ambitious plans for a massive renovation and redesign of the New York museum's Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. Devoted to Africa, Oceania and the Americas, the forty-thousand-square-foot wing will be designed by the architect Kulapat Yantrasast and his firm wHY, and is expected to complete in 2023.

Over the years, Yantrasast's practice has built up a reputation for their modern and open art spaces. Their portfolio of projects includes the Speed Art Museum in Kentucky, Michigan's Grand Rapids Art Museum, and the Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles. His previous works at the Harvard Art Museums and at the Art Institute of Chicago, in particular, attracted the attention of the team at the Met. Currently, Mr. Yantrasast is working on the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, as well as a youth arts center in neighboring Oakland.

Americas Gallery looking South. Image by wHY.

"I love art and I love discoveries," says Yantrasast. "For that...

New York City's big art switcheroo involves The Met, The Frick, The Whitney, and a certain Marcel Breuer building

2018-09-21T19:01:00-04:00

Henry Clay Frick’s venerable Old Master paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and porcelain seem destined for a change of scene. In an unusual game of musical chairs, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Frick Collection announced today (21 September) that the Met will vacate the Brutalist Breuer building on Madison Avenue in 2020. Its departure will make way for the Frick to move in late that year while its mansion undergoes a renovation and expansion five blocks away.

Click here to catch up with Archinect's coverage of the not entirely undramatic Frick Collection expansion saga.

A full-scale replica of the "Psycho" house touches down on the roof of the Met

2016-04-19T15:45:00-04:00

For the past few years, the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has supported major, site-specific art installations. The sweeping rooftop perched above Manhattan's 5th Avenue has previously seen works by Pierre Huyghe, Dan Graham, and Tomas Saraceno, among other. This summer, a full-scale replica of the famous Bates Mansion from Alfred Hitchcock's classic film Psycho will serve as the background of many a selfie (and hopefully achieve a bit more too).

A project by the artist Cornelia Parker, Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) also marks one of the first major achievements of Beatrice Galilee since becoming the Met's first-ever curator of architecture.

For related articles, check out these links:

Shohei Shigematsu of OMA transforms the Met for the spring Costume Institute exhibit

2016-04-19T12:58:00-04:00

NOT MANY ARCHITECTS get to reshape a wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But Shohei Shigematsu, who runs the New York branch of Rem Koolhaas’s Rotterdam-based firm, OMA, has done precisely that. This month he converts a skylit, double-height section of the museum—the 1970s Robert Lehman Wing—into a graceful, cathedral-like setting for Manus x Machina, the Costume Institute’s spring show, opening May 5.

The exhibit, curated by Andrew Bolton, considers "the founding of the haute couture in the 19th century, when the sewing machine was invented, and the emergence of a distinction between the hand (manus) and the machine (machina) at the onset of industrialization and mass production."

Accordingly, the organizers wanted an exhibition design that blends the analog and the mechanical. Shigematsu's intervention is intended to "soften" the existing brick-and-stone of the 1970's-era Robert Lehman wing, which was designed by Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates.

Interested in other collaborations between the sartorial world and architecture? Check out these links:

As the Met moves into the old Whitney, can it shrug off the iconic building's associations with its former tenant?

2016-02-16T17:13:00-05:00

On March 18, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens an annex at Madison Avenue and 75th Street in Manhattan, it will be attempting to shrug off the ghost of a museum past. The specter is the Whitney Museum of American Art, which called the iconic Marcel Breuer building on that corner home for nearly five decades. In an eight-year deal, the Met is leasing the Breuer building from the Whitney— which relocated to its dazzling new Renzo Piano–designed home last year...

The Breuer-designed building will house some of the Met's modern and contemporary collection. But shrugging off the association between the Brutalist masterpiece and its former tenant may prove a tough task. For many, nothing say's "the Whitney" more than those protruding windows...

For related coverage, check out some of these older articles:

The Met selects David Chipperfield to design its new museum wing

2015-03-12T14:35:00-04:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has named the architect for the institution's latest expansion project: David Chipperfield, the British master of elegance with offices in London, Berlin, Shanghai & Milan, was selected after a year-long research and selection process and announced yesterday by museum director and CEO, Thomas P. Campbell.

The job calls for the redesign of The Met's Southwest Wing for Modern and Contemporary Art, and — quite likely — also for adjacent exhibition spaces for the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.

“We based the final selection of an architect on three criteria: vision, experience, and compatibility," Campbell remarked in his announcement. "David Chipperfield’s global architectural experience and sensibility, along with his commitment to the collaborative aspect of creating architecture, make him a perfect partner on this milestone project. His museum projects are brilliantly coherent, elegant, and accessible—from the Neues Museum in Berl...

The Met appoints Beatrice Galilee as Associate Curator of Architecture & Design

2014-03-03T21:17:00-05:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has appointed Beatrice Galilee as the Daniel Brodsky Associate Curator of Architecture and Design for the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, as announced by Museum Director and CEO Thomas P. Campbell.

Galilee's title is one of two new Museum curatorial positions endowed by and named after the Museum's Chairman, Daniel Brodsky, and his wife Estrellita B. Brodsky, an art historian and specialist in Latin American Art.

Galilee will begin work at the Museum this spring.

Here's more background info about Galilee: "Beatrice Galilee is a curator, writer, critic, and lecturer. Most recently, she was chief curator of the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Close, Closer, where she presented alternative realms of architectural and spatial practice. She was co-curator at the 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale, Design is Design is Not Design, in South Korea, and the 2009 Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, City Urbanizati...

Parsons and the Met team up to increase accessibility for disabled

2013-12-13T14:40:00-05:00

As virtual access to art collections expands through online walk-throughs and projects like Google’s Open Gallery, museums have long been experimenting within their own halls with ways to accommodate a wider range of visitors, particularly those with disabilities. Historically, museums have been leaders in the field of accessible institutional design, whether through improvised additions or new technology. In a collaboration between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Parsons The New School for Design, students in the School of Art, Media, and Technology have focused on how both physical and online resources can optimize the museum experience for people with disabilities.

Working under the Design and Technology masters program and alongside education specialists at the Met, Parsons’ students spent the last semester designing a host of physical and digital tools to not only make museum resources more accessible, but to serve and benefit the public at large. Their work, including a...