Manhattan’s only art museum dedicated exclusively to contemporary works is set to double in size with the opening of a 5,600-square-metre expansion in autumn 2025, according to a press release. The new building, designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas, in collaboration with Cooper Robertson, will add a new seven-story facility to existing premises on the Bowery at Prince Street, in what is already a busy year for new museum launches around the world.
Described by Shigematsu as a “highly connected yet distinct counterpart to the existing museum’s verticality and solidity”, the new offering will present “horizontally expansive galleries for curatorial variety, open vertical circulation, and a diversity of spaces for gathering, exchange, and creation.” These include venues for artist residencies and public programs and a bespoke new home for the museum’s NEW INC cultural incubator, as well as a new entrance plaza, three new elevators and an atrium stairway intended to improve visitor flow.
A vital civic resource with an “active public face”
It’s not the first time since its 1977 inauguration in a temporary home on Hudson Street that the New Museum has moved with the times. “The New Museum has always been a future-facing museum—not a place for preserving and recording history, but a place where history is made,” said Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum. “We are thrilled to be working with Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas on OMA’s first public building in New York City, ushering in a new era of possibilities for the New Museum as a vital civic resource for New Yorkers and the global arts community.”
That “active public face” of the new space is reflected in windows that provide views out onto the surrounding New York neighbourhoods, transparent mesh materials, and an extension to the seventh floor Sky Room with a panoramic vista of downtown Manhattan. There will also be an expanded bookstore, a full-service restaurant, and an open-air venue for public art installations – in an effort to “openly engage the surrounding community and beyond,” Shigematsu notes.
Inaugural exhibition to explore humanity and technology
The first exhibition to take place across the entire reconfigured museum will be New Humans: Memories of the Future, which, press materials explain, is “an exploration of artists’ enduring preoccupation with what it means to be human in the face of sweeping technological changes.” Supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the curation will aim to highlight “moments when dramatic technological and societal changes spurred new conceptions of humanity” through works by over 150 international artists, writers, scientists, architects, and filmmakers from the 20th and 21st centuries.
Further information about the year’s programming, as well as the 2026 exhibition schedule – which will include the first New York museum solo presentation of artist Arthur Jafa – will be revealed over the coming months.
