NEW YORK, NY.- The Board of Trustees of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, one of the nation’s premier showcases for the art of our time, announced today that it will host a groundbreaking ceremony on the morning of October 11, 2005, to launch construction of its much anticipated new building on the Bowery. Designed by the acclaimed Tokyo-based firm of Sejima and Nishizawa/SANAA, the new 60,000 square foot, seven-story New Museum will be the first art museum building constructed in downtown Manhattan in over a century.

The new New Museum will rise on the site of what is currently a parking lot at 235 Bowery, between Stanton and Rivington Streets at the beginning of Prince Street, on a pivotal geographic and cultural point in New York City’s urban fabric, along one of its most storied thoroughfares, where several of the city’s most distinctive communities meet. A dramatic stack of rectangular boxes shifted off axis in different directions, dressed in silvery metal cladding and punctuated by skylights and windows offering vistas and vignettes of the city, the building will feature expansive flexible, column-free exhibition spaces, a 188-seat theater, a sun-flooded lobby bookstore, expanded classrooms, library and study center, café, and rooftop terraces facing south and east over the cityscape.

The new New Museum of Contemporary Art is scheduled to open to the public on the Bowery in late 2007, in conjunction with the institution’s 30th anniversary. In the interim, the Museum occupies a temporary exhibition space at 556 West 22nd Street in Chelsea. The building will be among several international arts-related landmark buildings designed by Sejima and Nishizawa, including the new 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan (completed 2004); the new Glass Pavilion of the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio (to be completed spring 2006); and the Institute of Modern Art of Valencia in Spain (to be completed 2007). In September, SANAA won a competition to design Louvre II, a satellite of the renowned Paris museum to be completed in the northern French town of Lens in 2009.

The new New Museum building is the centerpiece of a $50 million-plus capital project that includes construction of the SANAA design, significant expansion of the institution’s endowment, and other costs related to planned growth.

“Downtown Manhattan has been home to generations of artists in every discipline from around the world,” said Saul Dennison, President of the Board of Trustees of the New Museum. “Their ideas, energy, and discoveries have always been central to the very identity of New York City, and are more relevant and urgent today than ever. With this building on the Bowery, the New Museum of Contemporary Art aspires to make a contribution to both the built landscape of our city and New York’s continued pre-eminence as a global cultural capital, open to all people and forms of expression.”

“This administration is delighted to be a key partner in creating this spectacular new building for the New Museum of Contemporary Art,” said Commissioner Kate D. Levin, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. “Cultural organizations are a force for revitalization in communities across the five boroughs, bringing with them new audiences and some of the most distinguished architecture in the City. The New Museum’s dramatic design promises to further animate the Lower East Side neighborhood, and its innovative programs and exhibitions will help fuel the vitality of the City’s creative community as a whole.”

Lisa Phillips, Henry Luce III Director of the New Museum, said, “It is fitting that after 28 years of presenting contemporary art, we are now creating a museum building whose design is commensurate with our program. Sejima and Nishizawa have conceived an ideal new home for the Museum – a catalyst for dialogue and creativity, community interaction, and a constant exchange of ideas. With the building on the Bowery, the New Museum will affirm its passionate commitment to the importance of art to everyday life.”

The Architects - Kazuyo Sejima, 48, and Ryue Nishizawa, 38, have received accolades internationally for work that is luminous and minimal in its aesthetics; sophisticated in its treatment of complex building detail and fluid, non-hierarchical space; and highly original in its use of exterior facades as permeable membranes that establish subtle but provocative relationships between interior and exterior, individual and community, and the realms of public and private experience. In Japan, the firm has completed numerous critically acclaimed commercial and institutional buildings, community centers, homes and museums. The architects have worked collaboratively in the partnership of SANAA Ltd. since 1995. Sejima studied architecture at the Japan Women's University before going to work for the celebrated architect Toyo Ito. She launched her own practice in 1987 and was named Young Architect of the Year in Japan in 1992. Nishizawa studied architecture at Yokohama National University and, in addition to his work with Sejima, has maintained an independent practice since 1997.