The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has unveiled a $450 million expansion, which increases the the New York gallery's space by 47,000 square feet and "allows us to rethink the experience of art in the Museum".
The extension, which opens to the public on October 21, includes a space for performance, where festivals and residencies will be held, as well as offering visitors the chance to watch rehearsals and artists at work. There will also be a "creativity lab", where people can interact, discuss the museum's collection and make their own art.
"Often museums feel like sealed boxes and we wanted to get away from that and to take advantage of the fact that we're located in this fascinating part of New York city," said Moma director Glenn Lowry.
In addition, the museum's permanent collection, which is seen by three million visitors a year, has been re-hung, so that works from different eras and in different mediums can be seen side by side. “Throughout the building we have tried to identify moments where unexpected relationships suddenly change the way we see something," said Lowry. "You can take works of art that are roughly contemporaneous but from different parts of the world and they spark conversations with each other that are unexpected.
"We all live now with screens and we’re used to this kind of lateral projection of imagery. You tap here, you get this, you connect this. There’s a kind of seamlessness to the way we absorb both images in the virtual world and images in the physical world.
"And so I think part of what we wanted to do was to clearly recognise that our audiences, not just our younger audiences, all of our audiences, are experiencing imagery in new and different ways."
A third of the permanent collection will be changed every six months.
