NEW YORK.- The Museum of Modern Art is more than halfway through its re-construction in midtown Manhattan, and has begun to take shape and form with the most comprehensive building project in the Museum’s history. Scheduled to open as planned in late 2004/early 2005 to coincide with MoMA’s 75th anniversary, the Museum combines new and different kinds of space with enhanced existing facilities to allow MoMA to articulate its programs and meet the challenges of the future. The 630,000-square-foot Museum nearly doubles the capacity of the former facility in a completely reconfigured space, and will offer expanded facilities for special exhibitions, public programming, educational outreach, and scholarly research.

Architect Yoshio Taniguchi has created an elegant new museum that responds to the growing complexity of art today, providing an ideal showcase for MoMA’s preeminent collection of modern and contemporary art with a series of architecturally distinctive galleries specifically designed for the type and scale of the works displayed. Spacious contemporary art galleries are prominently located on the second floor, demonstrating the Museum’s ongoing commitment to presenting the art of our time, followed by more intimately scaled galleries for the collection on the three levels above and expansive, skylit galleries for temporary exhibitions on the top floor. The total exhibition space is projected to increase from 85,000 to approximately 125,000 square feet.

The new Museum presents a unique solution to the density and complexity of a midtown Manhattan site and reflects the vitality of the city, engaging the public with a broad passage connecting 53rd and 54th Streets. Expanses of glass provide inviting views through a 12,400-square-foot lobby to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, restored to its original size and now visually accessible from many vantage points throughout the Museum. Innovative natural and artificial lighting combined with column-free spaces and glass curtain walls open up the Museum to passersby and provide a soft glow at night.

Glenn D. Lowry, Director of The Museum of Modern Art, says: “Yoshio Taniguchi’s design is subtle and precise, with an emphasis on detail and materiality. At the same time, it reconfigures and reinterprets the former midtown facility, providing a completely new and improved space that reinforces the Museum’s commitment to the art of the present as well as the achievements of modern tradition.”

Museum architect Yoshio Taniguchi says: “My goal for The Museum of Modern Art was to create a total environment for people and art, rather than an expression of a particular style of architecture. Through the use of materials, natural light, and proportion, I hope to have carried on the tradition and history of MoMA, while at the same time offering new and radical change.”

The Museum has reached $600 million or 70 percent of its $858 million capital campaign goal, and has received the full support of its Board of Trustees. Several Board members contributed a total of approximately $260 million for specific spaces within the new Museum, which will be named in their honor. They include: Peggy and David Rockefeller for the new gallery building; Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder for the renovation of the 11 West 53rd Street building; Catie and Donald Marron for the atrium of the new building; Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman for the Education and Research Building; and Edward John Noble for the Education Center and Celeste Bartos for the new theater, both of which are housed in the new Education and Research Building. Additional donor announcements will be forthcoming.

The renovation of the 11 West 53rd Street building, designed by Philip Goodwin and Edward Durrell Stone in 1939, includes preserving the façade and restoring the serpentine piano canopy of the original design, which will mark the entrance to the Museum’s theaters. Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, executive architect of the overall building project, is also overseeing the renovation of 11 West 53rd Street. The restored Goodwin and Stone façade, along with Philip Johnson’s 1965 addition and Cesar Pelli’s 1984 Museum Tower, are joined by Taniguchi’s new façade of fritted glass, black granite, and aluminum to create a street-level panorama of MoMA’s architectural history.

On 54th Street, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden is framed by the gallery building on the west and the 62,000-square-foot Education and Research Building on the east, which will provide an enhanced and expanded space for educational outreach and scholarly research. The Education and Research Building will be completed by the time the Museum opens, while interior work will continue in the following months. In the interim, a full range of educational programs will be conducted in the Museum.

Gallery Configuration

John Elderfield, Chief Curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture, says: “The new building will enrich as well as enlarge the Museum’s presentation of modern and contemporary art. For the first time, contemporary art will have its own, immense floor of galleries. The historical painting and sculpture collection will occupy two expanded floors which will unfold the development of the collection, complemented by variable galleries to contain changing, special displays.”

Visitors will enter the first floor of the new Museum into a lobby containing ticketing and retail facilities and visitor and membership amenities. Beyond, to the east, is the restored Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, which has been expanded by 15 percent and reestablished as the heart of the Museum. A restaurant is adjacent to the south side of the Garden. Escalators lead to the lower level where the Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters are located.

A grand stairway composed of green slate with glass and stainless steel handrails leads to the second level, which features more than 20,000 square feet for contemporary art galleries surrounding a light-filled atrium soaring 110 feet and providing shifting glimpses of the skylights above. The second floor includes additional galleries for Prints & Illustrated Books, the Media gallery, a café, bookstore, and MoMA’s restored “Bauhaus” staircase, which leads to the third floor. The third floor features gallery space for Architecture and Design, Drawings, Photography, and temporary exhibitions. Fixed and variable galleries on the fourth and fifth floors are devoted to Painting and Sculpture from MoMA’s collection. A café with an outdoor terrace, providing a striking view of the Garden, is also located on the fifth floor. Galleries designated for temporary exhibitions are on the sixth floor.

Project Background

Architect Yoshio Taniguchi of Taniguchi and Associates in Japan was selected for The Museum of Modern Art’s new building project in December 1997 after a year-long competition involving ten architects. The Museum’s Capital Campaign was launched in November 1998 and demolition began in July 2000. The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden was closed in August 2000 to be used as a staging area for the construction.

Construction of the new Museum began in the spring of 2001, and Museum operations temporarily moved to MoMA QNS in Long Island City, Queens, in June 2002.

Architects

Taniguchi and Associates is the Tokyo-based design architect for the new Museum of Modern Art, the firm’s first international commission. Over the past 20 years, the firm has designed a wide range of buildings in Japan, including art museums, libraries, schools, a hotel, an aquarium, and a tea house and garden. Projects include: the Nagano Prefectural Shinano Museum, Higashiyama Kaii Gallery (1990); the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, Marugame City Library (1991); the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota City Tea-Ceremony Houses (1995); and the Tokyo National Museum, The Gallery of the Horyuji Treasures (1999).

Yoshio Taniguchi is well known for his distinctive use of light, proportion, and materials in his museum designs. He received a Master of Architecture degree from Harvard University and worked in the studio of Kenzo Tange before establishing his own firm in 1979. He has taught at Harvard University and the University of California at Los Angeles as well as in Tokyo and Capetown. He has received over a dozen awards for his work and in 1996 was made an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), executive architect, is recognized globally for it’s innovative and award winning designs. Based in New York, KPF offers full services in architecture, master planning, space planning, programming, building analysis, and interior design. The firm’s diverse portfolio includes corporate headquarters; educational, institutional, and health care facilities; hotels; museums; airports; and entertainment complexes. Since it’s founding in 1976, KPF has served clients in more than 30 countries. Projects include headquarters for International Business Machines (IBM) in both Armonk, New York, and Montreal, Quebec; DG Bank Frankfurt, Germany; Goldman Sachs (Peterborough Court) in London, England; the World Bank in Washington DC and the Rodin Pavilion at the Samsung headquarters in Seoul, Korea.