After years of planning, fundraising and construction, two of New York City’s most influential contemporary art institutions—the Studio Museum in Harlem and the New Museum on the Bowery—are preparing to reopen to the public this autumn, each unveiling a major architectural transformation that promises to reshape their role in the cultural fabric of the city.
In Harlem, the Studio Museum will open its first purpose-built facility, a monumental new seven-storey building rising on West 125th Street that affirms the museum’s historic roots in the neighbourhood while positioning it for a new era of growth. Downtown, the New Museum will debut a prismatic seven-storey expansion to its existing flagship building at 235 Bowery, doubling its exhibition space and amplifying its role as a hub for experimental art.
New face on the block: the New Museum on the Bowery
Rendering: courtesy OMA/bloomimages.de
Designed to expand gallery, studio and public spaces; enrich educational and public programming; and deepen engagement with their surrounding communities, both projects embody a renewed vision of the museum as a porous, adaptive and locally grounded institution.
A purpose-built home in Harlem
Conceived during the cultural and political ferment of the Civil Rights era, the Studio Museum in Harlem was founded in 1968 by a coalition of artists, activists and philanthropists determined to create a platform for artists of African descent. Since then, it has played a defining role in shaping cultural discourse both locally and internationally, amplifying Black artistic voices from its longtime home on West 125th Street.
On 15 November, the museum will unveil a new chapter in its history: an 82,000 sq. ft facility constructed on the site of its former home. Designed by Adjaye Associates with Cooper Robertson as executive architect, the new building will be the historic institution’s first purpose-built home, designed and constructed expressly for its mission and its expanding ambitions.
“Our incredible new building makes it all the more possible for us to continue the work our founders set out to do,” Thelma Golden, the museum’s director and chief curator, tells The Art Newspaper. “To me, our new museum is a tribute to our founders, to Black art and to the people, past and present of Harlem.”
The Studio Museum first opened in a rented loft at 2033 Fifth Avenue before moving in 1982 to a converted bank at 144 West 125th Street, refitted by the architect J. Max Bond Jr. In 2015, the museum announced plans to construct a new home on the same site. Designs by Adjaye Associates and Cooper Robertson were revealed in 2017, and the museum closed shortly thereafter to begin construction.
In June, the museum announced that its capital campaign had exceeded its $300m goal for the project. Developed in partnership with the City of New York, the new building will allow the museum to function as a social gathering place while expanding its exhibition and programming potential, deepening its role as an incubator for emerging artists of African and Afro-Latinx descent.
The new building was designed to reflect its rich artistic and cultural environment while offering accessible public space. Its architecture draws on Harlem’s iconic brownstones, bustling street life and places of worship, with a ground-floor façade made of precast concrete and glass that dissolves the boundary between museum and neighbourhood.
A “reverse stoop” will function as a flexible programming space for the Studio Museum
Courtesy Studio Museum in Harlem, photo © Dror Baldinger FAIAe
Inside, the new facility features 14,000 sq. ft of exhibition space—a 60% increase from its former home—along with 2,100 sq. ft of studios for the museum’s artist-in-residence programme. The expansion also broadens the museum’s visitor amenities and public gathering spaces, with features such as the “reverse stoop”—a stepped space descending into the museum that doubles as a flexible programming space for lectures and events. An additional 8,000 sq. ft of outdoor space, including a rooftop terrace with sweeping views of the surrounding neighbourhood, will be used for programming and special events.
“Our reopening…is an embodiment of the visions, dreams and aspirations of the pioneering individuals who inaugurated our museum in 1968,” Golden says. “They understood the significance of having an institution which simultaneously served as a space dedicated to artists of African descent and as a communal hub where Harlem residents could take part in educational programmes and community events.”
Looking back and forward
To inaugurate its new home, the Studio Museum will open with a comprehensive survey of the late artist, educator and activist Tom Lloyd. Lloyd’s work was the subject of the museum’s inaugural 1968 exhibition, Electronic Refractions II, and this new presentation returns to that foundational moment while re-examining his trailblazing integration of technology and art. The show also highlights Lloyd’s activism, including his work with the Art Workers’ Coalition and his founding of the Store Front Museum in Queens.
The museum’s opening programme will also showcase works drawn from its nearly 9,000-piece permanent collection. Displayed throughout the inaugural year, the rotating presentation will offer a thematic survey of artistic production by artists of African descent across two centuries. Among the featured artists are Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold, Jordan Casteel, Rashid Johnson, Dawoud Bey and Lorraine O’Grady. A new collection handbook, Meaning Matter Memory, published by Phaidon, will accompany the exhibition.
Paying tribute to the museum’s renowned artist residency, more than 100 works on paper by past participants will be shown in the new building’s fourth-floor studio spaces. The presentation reflects on the programme’s legacy and influence ahead of the arrival of the next group of resident artists in early 2026.
Elsewhere in the building, an archival exhibition of historical documents, video footage and programming ephemera will trace the Studio Museum’s evolution and cultural impact, charting its growth over six decades into a defining institution in Harlem’s artistic landscape.
David Hammons’s 2004 work Untitled (African American Flag) will return outside the Studio Museum
Photo by Ray Llanos
Throughout the year, the museum will also debut site-specific works commissioned for its expanded project spaces, with contributions by the artists Camille Norment, Christopher Myers and Kapwani Kiwanga, to be installed in the museum’s terrace staircase, new education centre and second-floor project space, respectively. In tandem, several landmark works from its collection that have become closely associated with the museum will return to public view. David Hammons’s Untitled (African American Flag) (2004) will be reinstalled on the museum’s façade, while Glenn Ligon’s Give Us a Poem (2007) will be displayed in the lobby.
Expanded space for innovation
Way downtown on the Bowery, the New Museum—Manhattan’s only institution dedicated exclusively to contemporary art—is also preparing to reopen its doors on an undisclosed date this autumn. Closed since the spring of 2024, it is getting set to unveil a seven-storey, 62,000 sq. ft expansion designed by OMA’s Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas, in collaboration with Cooper Robertson as executive architect.
Designed as a complementary yet distinct counterpoint to the museum’s existing Sanaa-designed flagship building, the OMA expansion will double the New Museum’s gallery space, aligning ceiling heights and circulation across both structures. The design enhances visitor circulation and public gathering spaces, with three new elevators, a central atrium stairwell and a new outdoor plaza at the intersection of Bowery and Prince Street, which will feature rotating public art installations. The museum has raised $118m toward its $125m capital campaign goal for the project.
Founded in 1977 in a temporary space on Hudson Street, the New Museum has always served as a platform for emerging and experimental art. With the new building, the institution aims to deepen its role as a civic and cultural hub, offering improved amenities and expanded access to its programmes.
“Over our 50-year history, we have been driven by the impetus to better serve artists and the public,” says Lisa Phillips, the New Museum’s director. “OMA’s design for the expansion addresses critical needs for artists and visitors while also providing the flexibility for the New Museum to continue to adapt and experiment.”
The new New: a rendering of the expanded New Museum atrium
Courtesy OMA/bloomimages.de
Among the museum’s new features and amenities are an expanded lobby with a larger bookstore and full-service restaurant helmed by the chef Julia Sherman, an expanded seventh-floor space with panoramic downtown views and flexible programming spaces including a 74-seat forum for lectures and screenings. The expansion also creates dedicated studios for artists-in-residence and, for the first time, a permanent home for New Inc, the museum’s culture and technology incubator. The facility will include collaborative workspaces and a fabrication and media lab to be used by more than 100 creative entrepreneurs annually.
“One of the driving forces of this expansion was to make key New Museum programmes more publicly accessible,” Phillips says. “By creating a dedicated home for New Inc’s 100-plus annual cohort members and their exciting, experimental projects; by doubling the size of the Sky Room and opening up new possibilities for education initiatives and public programmes; and by creating a new public plaza enlivened with art installations inviting people into the museum—just to name a few of the new and expanded features of OMA’s design—the New Museum will welcome the public to our programmes in a way never before possible.”
As part of its efforts to increase accessibility, the museum will expand its educational initiatives. In July, it announced a $1m Arts Education Impact Grant from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, which will support the growth of initiatives serving high school students. These include the Bowery Art Space, a free monthly after-school drop-in programme for teens, and the NewMu Teen Fellowship, a two-year intensive programme focused on professional development and leadership through engagement with contemporary art.
New Museum’s new era
A 2024 sculpture by Precious Okoyomon that will be included in the opening exhibition at the New Museum
Courtesy Collection Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, © the artist, photo by Benedetta Mascalchi
The museum will inaugurate its expanded facilities with New Humans: Memories of the Future, a museum-wide exhibition featuring more than 150 artists, scientists, writers, architects and film-makers. The show features new and recent works by contemporary artists such as Meriem Bennani, Hito Steyerl, Anicka Yi, Wangechi Mutu, Precious Okoyomon and Tau Lewis, alongside historical pieces by 20th-century figures including Francis Bacon, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Tatsuo Ikedo, Kiki Kogelnik, Hannah Höch and Salvador Dalí. These works will trace how technological and social transformations have continually reshaped conceptions of the human condition. Framing artistic expression as a lens for examining the forces that define humanity, the exhibition will examine how today’s anxieties are rooted in enduring questions that have shaped human experience for generations.
The opening will also introduce site-specific commissions, including Art Lovers, a sculptural installation by Tschabalala Self on the museum’s façade, as well as new works by Sarah Lucas and Klára Hosnedlová, displayed on the entrance plaza and atrium staircase, respectively.
Beyond its reopening extravaganza, the institution is planning the first New York museum solo exhibition devoted to the artist Arthur Jafa in 2026, as well as the return of the New Museum Triennial, the museum’s recurring survey of emerging artists from around the world, long regarded as a bellwether of contemporary art’s next generation.
