On December 8, 1997, the trustees of The Museum of Modern Art selected Yoshio Taniguchi to be the architect for the Museum's Expansion and renovation scheduled to begin within the next three years. Mr. Taniguchi's selection was the culmination of an eighteen-month-long process that involved extensive discussions among the staff, trustees, and friends of the Museum about the institution's needs for the future. From an initial field of more than twenty architects or architectural teams, ten were invited to participate in the charette, or design exercise, and three (Taniguchi, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, and Bernard Tschumi) were asked to submit competition plans and models. Mr. Taniguchi's proposal was chosen on the basis of his dramatic but elegant design that reflects the unique vitality of Midtown Manhattan while sensitively drawing upon and transforming the language of modernism. Mr. Taniguchi's goal for this project is "to create an ideal environment for art and people through the imaginative and disciplined use of light, materials, and space." In so doing he proposes "to transform The Museum of Modern Art into a bold new museum while maintaining its historical, cultural, and social context" as one of New York's preeminent cultural institutions.
The Museum will be expanded immediately to the northwest on the Dorset Hotel site and will involve approximately 230,000 square feet of new construction, as well as 350,000 square feet of renovation. Among the high-lights of the new Museum will be an extensive education and research complex, an entrance specifically devoted to the accommodation of school groups and tours, an additional theater, and a doubling of the current space for galleries--with larger, more flexible skylight-enhanced galleries for contemporary art as well as temporary exhibtions. Mr. Taniguchi's scheme will be further refined over the coming months as the Museum prepares for construction.
At no time since its founding in 1929 has The Museum of Modern Art had such a unique opportunity to rethink its architectural and intellectual requirements. The completed project will allow the Museum to display its collection in fundamentally new ways, providing a deeper and richer experience for the public, while undertaking greatly enhanced educational initiatives.
