Expanded & Reimagined MoMA Opens on October 21, 2019

North/south section-perspective through the new gallery spaces at The Museum of Modern Art, looking east along Fifty-third Street. © 2017 Diller Scofidio + Renfro

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Building Project Description

The Museum of Modern Art has completed a renovation and expansion designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in collaboration with Gensler, that has increased gallery space by 30%, provides visitors with a more welcoming and comfortable experience, and better connects the Museum to the urban fabric of midtown Manhattan. Launched in 2014, the first phase of renovations on the east end was completed in 2017, and the second phase of expansion on the west end is now complete and opens to the public on October 21, 2019.

The overall expansion yields a net increase in MoMA’s gallery space of one third, to approximately 165,000 square feet, allowing the Museum to exhibit significantly more art in new and interdisciplinary ways. The design optimized current spaces to be more flexible and technologically sophisticated, expanded and opened up the main lobby into a light-filled, double-height space that connects seamlessly between West 53rd and 54th Streets, and created a multitude of circulation routes with more areas for visitors to pause and reflect. The state-of-the-art Studio in the heart of the Museum and an innovative second-floor Creativity Lab invite visitors to connect with art that explores new ideas about the present, past, and future. The flagship Museum store has been lowered one level and made visible to the street through a dramatic glass wall and a new sixth-floor café includes an outdoor terrace facing 53rd Street. The clear glass façade, new street-level galleries, and a ground floor free and open to all offer increased transparency and bring art closer to people on the streets of midtown Manhattan.

The architectural expression is a restrained conversation between the existing palette and new materials within The Museum of Modern Art. The design taps into the historic DNA of the building, relating disparate elements through a series of strategic interventions that reflect aspects of twentieth-century modernism: purity of material expression, abstraction of space, and thinness. Synthesis is achieved with a minimalist use of materials which correlates with the existing building fabric. 

Elevation of The Museum of Modern Art on Fifty-third Street with cutaway view below street level. © 2017 Diller Scofidio + Renfro

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Exterior view of The Museum of Modern Art on 53rd Street © 2017 Diller Scofidio + Renfro

FAÇADE

The 53rd Street façade is conscious of the Museum’s architectural history in the existing Goodwin and Stone, Johnson, and Taniguchi buildings but shaped by the new demands of its adjoining spaces behind. The Studio and the Daylight Gallery share a frameless suspended glass wall with a black dot frit outer surface to delicately modulate daylight and reflection. The Studio features an additional interior glass wall with metal mesh interlayer, as the inner wall of the box-in-box, acoustically isolated construction 3’ behind to control outside sound migration and further filter daylight and view. The façade of the public spaces – the lobby, the suspended blade stair, the Street Level gallery and the retail space below – employ frameless glass panels that are structurally clamped to function as glass beams both vertically and horizontally to maximize visibility from the street to activities inside the museum. Four of the Street Level Gallery façade panels can open up to the sidewalk to facilitate loading and unloading work to the Projects Room Gallery. 

Exterior view of The Museum of Modern Art, 53rd Street Entrance Canopy
The Museum of Modern Art Renovation and Expansion
Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler
Photography by Iwan Baan, Courtesy of MoMA

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Exterior view of The Museum of Modern Art, Blade Stair Atrium, 53rd Street
The Museum of Modern Art Renovation and Expansion
Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler
Photography by Iwan Baan, Courtesy of MoMA

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STREET-LEVEL GALLERY, PROJECTS GALLERY (Level +1)

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The 3,900 square foot street-level galleries, including the dedicated Projects Gallery, are free and open to all on the expanded ground floor. The double-height Projects Gallery (26’- 6”) is responsive to variable media and scale, integrating roll-up shades for projections and black out shades to enable variable lighting control for projections. The custom designed LED light fixtures can be reconfigured within the light track system. They provide an even wall-wash of light, ideally suited for mixed-media installations.

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PAULA AND JAMES CROWN CREATIVITY LAB (Level +2)

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The 1,600 square foot Crown Creativity Lab, designed by Gensler, on the second floor is an experimental, creative space programmed by the Education Department to explore ideas, questions, and art processes. The use of wood and soft materials creates a warm and engaging space. The choice of plywood creates a playful environment, and the lighting illuminates the space, as seen from the lobby. A large pivoting wall for projections and pinups, as well as full height storage walls, support MoMA’s dynamic educational programs.

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DAVID GEFFEN WING, JERRY SPEYER AND KATHERINE FARLEY BUILDING (Level +2, +4, +5)

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Thanks to the redesigned circulation, the new western expansion of the Museum will be dedicated almost entirely to the display of art. The more than 40,000 square feet of gallery space being added in the western portion of the building will enable MoMA to realize a long-held aspiration: to present significantly more of its collection through a series of fluid, interconnected narratives of modern and contemporary art across all mediums. The existing galleries on the second, fourth, and fifth floors have been expanded westward through the new David Geffen Wing inside the 53W53 building designed by Jean Nouvel, adding approximately 11,500 sf per floor. The 30 percent increase in gallery space includes the Jerry Speyer and Katherine Farley Building, a stack of vertically interlocking galleries of varying heights, some naturally lit, some equipped for performance and film. The new galleries can accommodate over double the typical load capacity of existing galleries, measuring 250 pounds per square foot with provisions for 13,000 pound point loads throughput the galleries. The subtle shifts in palette marking the passage between old and new galleries include increasing 4-inch wide wooded plank flooring to 8-inch wide planks and blackened steel portals inspired by the Taniguchi-designed stainless steel portals.

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MARIE-JOSÉE AND HENRY KRAVIS STUDIO (Level +4, +5)

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The 2,000 square foot state-of-the-art Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio is the world’s first dedicated space for performance, process, and time-based art centrally integrated within the galleries of a major museum. Here, performance, dance, music, and sound works connect to the stories of modern and contemporary art in the surrounding collection galleries, through vestibule doors on the fourth floor and an overlook window on the fifth floor flex gallery.

The 31-foot, double-height black box space can accommodate a range of seating and staging scenarios with a maximum seating capacity of 105 and a 20’ deep stage. Demountable seating risers can be deployed, or stored, to accommodate an open floor plan. The space can accommodate variable acoustics requirements, with a Sound Transmission Class Rating of 60, on par with major concert halls. While performances can be daylit, the studio is also equipped with solar shading, black out curtains, and theatrical lighting. A walkable, suspended tension ceiling grid further enhances the studio’s flexibility.

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Installation View of Fossil Psychics for Christa (2019) by Kerstin Brätsch in The Caroll and Milton Petrie Terrace Sixth Floor Café, The Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art Renovation and Expansion
Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler
Photography by Iwan Baan, Courtesy of MoMA

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THE CAROLL AND MILTON PETRIE TERRACE SIXTH FLOOR CAFÉ (Level +6)

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The 3,600 square foot café provides a location for casual refreshments and dining, as well as an opportunity for site-specific art installation on the Museum’s highest floor. Furniture can be stacked or removed for special events. The indoor café can accommodate an 85-person seating capacity, while a terrace facing 53rd Street accommodates a 55-person seating capacity.

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BUILDING CHRONOLOGY

1929: The Museum of Modern Art is founded
1939: Goodwin-Stone Building opened
1964: Philip Johnson Extension completed
1984: Cesar Pelli Extension completed
2004: Yoshio Taniguchi Extension completed
2014: Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler, commissioned for the expansion of MoMA

2016: Expansion groundbreaking
2017: Phase 1 Renovation completed
2019: Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler Expansion completed

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For further information: www.moma.org

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Copy & Images courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art

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