New Museum Sanaa

GALLERY

The exterior shines over the rest of Bowery street because of the luminosity it achieves as a result of the contrast that it produces thanks to the clean and neat architecture appearance that the glass-covered façade gives it, and also even in a more literal way thanks to the silver and white membrane that covers it; a smooth, seamless and delicate anodized aluminium mesh skin, made of a material never used before to clad the façade of a major building.

From the seven floors the building has, only three are opened to exhibition and actually hold collections, but the artistic content of the New Museum is perhaps too modern for those who are not erudite artists, so, aside from the view of the roof-terrace, perhaps it is not really worth visiting the new Museum aside from its architectonic value. Still, you can do it and enjoy one of the pioneers in modern organic architecture in the city of New York. Besides, the neighbourhood is also worth visiting, with box-alike houses that were part of the inspiration for the construction of the building.

The Museum has always had a desire for exploring new ideas and conceptions of art, so they wanted their new building to reflect the innovative attitude of it, therefore offering the project in 2002 to Tokyo-based architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA, whose qualifications included the 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize among several other. They felt that “the New Museum [was] a combination of elegant and urban” and that they “were determined to make a building that felt like that”, creating a seven-story building that shines thanks to its construction divided by six white huge boxes. An idea that, nevertheless, was brought up as a solution for the organization of the space and the restriction it had.

The Japanese duo commented that they “knew [that they] could not maximize the entire site with solid architecture, [they] had to reduce the building’s mass somehow to create space between it and the perimeter. The solution of the shifted boxes arrived quickly and intuitively. (…) Now we have a building that meets the city, allows natural light inside [and] gives the Museum column-free galleries and programmatic flexibility”. So basically, the duo achieved in 2007 a building that was tremendously effective on terms of the display of the work arts (unlike, for example, Frank Lloyd Wright’s design for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum).

Created in 1977 by long-time curator of The Whitney Museum, Marcia Tucker, The New Museum was born as an institution with a different perspective on the intentions of its structuration regarding the involvement of the curators as compared to the one that the Guggenheim or the MoMA had.

The New Museum, according to its long-time president Saul Dennison, “is not about the money, it is about the people”. The museum wanted to create an atmosphere with a sense of community that made every curator involved with the work of the artist that was being financed, which got to appeal to a higher number of people to an extent that when the Museum required a $60 million finance for the construction of the new building in Bowery, they got it within months.