MoMA To Close For 4-Month Renovation, Museum Announces

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — The Museum of Modern Art will shut down for the entire summer to conduct a renovation that will add more than 40,000 square feet of gallery space to the Midtown institution, the museum announced Tuesday.

The MoMA is set to close on June 15 and reopen Oct. 21, according to museum officials. The renovation will allow the museum to completely re-envision how it presents its collection, museum officials announced.

"Inspired by Alfred Barr’s original vision to be an experimental museum in New York, the real

value of this expansion is not just more space, but space that allows us to rethink the
experience of art in the Museum," Glenn D. Lowry, the MoMA's director, said in a statement.

"We have an opportunity to re-energize and expand upon our founding mission—to welcome everyone to experience MoMA as a laboratory for the study and presentation of the art of our time, across all visual arts."

The museum can afford to sacrifice the revenue that will be lost while the facility is closed during the city's peak tourism months due to a recent set of hefty charitable gifts, the New York Times reported. MoMA received $100 million from businessman David Geffen in 2016 and is set to announce a $200 million gift from the estate of David Rockefeller, the Times reported.

Much of the museum's reorganization will be done in a way that features underrepresented artists. The second-, fourth- and fifth-floor galleries will be connected by a "general chronological spine," that will "offer a deeper experience of art through all mediums and by artists from more diverse geographies and backgrounds than ever before," according to a museum press release.

Artworks will rotate every six to ninth months to different galleries in the building, so the new MoMA will offer a constantly evolving experience, museum officials said. The museum's collections in its second-, fourth- and fifth-floor galleries will be entirely new by 2022.

Some of MoMA's inaugural exhibits upon re-opening will feature the museum's collection of modern Latin American art through paintings, sculptures, and works on paper; the career of multidisciplinary artist Pope.L and the 1960s artwork of Betye Saar.

The renovation will also result in the launch of a new museum store and the expansion of the museum's hours.

Renderings by Diller Scofidio + Renfro courtesy MoMA