NEW YORK.- Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, announced that the Museum plans to move forward with Renzo Piano’s design for the Whitney’s expansion and renovation.

Piano’s design will add new space for galleries and education programs, an auditorium, and research center--including conservation laboratory, a works on paper study room and a library. It will also create retail and restaurant amenities as well as administrative offices within the footprint of the existing Whitney facilities. The project will solve the Museum’s long-term critical need for space for its permanent collection, special exhibitions and programs, and enhance the visitor experience throughout the entire museum. Piano will also lead the renovation of the Whitney’s existing building, designed by Marcel Breuer.

Scaled to the residential buildings on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the expansion will simultaneously provide a sense of architectural evolution and historical continuity while strengthening the Whitney’s role as a vital cultural and civic center that contributes to the neighborhood.

“This project will transform the museum and allow us to provide an experience of the highest quality for our visitors. It will offer the flexible spaces we need to mount a rich combination of exhibitions and educational programs for diverse audiences. The new permanent collection galleries will enable us to effectively tell the complex and multi-faceted story of American 20th and 21st century art,” said Weinberg. “Renzo Piano’s addition will be an extraordinary gift to our visitors, to our neighborhood and to New York.”

Piano’s design maintains the individual architectural identities of the Whitney’s existing buildings including its Marcel Breuer-designed flagship building, four storefront buildings on Madison Avenue and two townhouse office buildings on East 74th Street. A new structure will sit within the brownstones on Madison Avenue and 74th Streets, carefully integrated into the mixed residential–commercial neighborhood.