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E-mail this ArticleIn order to gain visitor attention and dollars, New York City’s museums need to change with the times, but this idea seems now to have gained more impetus than at any other time. When museums—and we chronicle the most exciting and innovative below—invest in themselves, they also invest in New York City, which continues to reinvent itself.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The opening of the Roman & Greek galleries at the Met in April of last year is considered the first step in the recent round of exciting New York City initiatives. Focusing on art between the eras of Alexander the Great (3rd Century B.C.) and Constantine the Great (early 4th Century A.D.), the galleries contain some 5,300 pieces, many never shown before. One court displays 20 Roman sculptures in a range of styles and stone; evident is that Dionysus, the Roman god of wine, was always a popular subject.
Also renovated and expanded recently are the Galleries for 19th- and Early 20th-Century European Paintings & Sculpture.
Lastly, the museum’s director, Philippe de Montebello, announced early this year that he was retiring after 45 years, 31 in the top job. His final day will be on Dec. 31; expect the new boss to have fresh ideas.
The New Museum of Contemporary Art
The Bowery always has been interesting but perhaps never the nicest part of town. Flophouses and a sweaty 1970’s rock n’ roll club called CBGB—which gave us Patti Smith, The Ramones and Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers, among others—made way in the ‘80s to restaurant-supply stores. Joining all this last November was the New Museum of Contemporary Art (a flophouse remains two doors down), its arresting exterior six nonaligned cubes atop a lobby and sporting a rainbow-shaped and -colored sign that inextricably says, “Hell, Yes!”. This is the first piece of art visitors will view, created by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone.
A restaurant supplements a theater, three floors of bright exhibit space and an events room with a terrace.
Museum of Art & Design
Huntingdon Hartford, heir to the A&P grocery fortune (he died this May at the age of 97), opened a gallery in 1964 at 40 W. 53rd St., on a traffic island between Broadway and 8th Ave., which one critic likened to a “Venetian palazzo on lollipops.” The building, which has no right angles, next month becomes the new home of the Museum of Art & Design.
The move will give the facility 54,000 square feet of space. Hartford’s original marble exterior was deemed too out-of-date for the new museum, but as designers wanted to keep its white, spectral presence, 20,000 tiles—made in Germany and the Netherlands—will now don the exterior.
It also will have a restaurant with Central Park vistas. (Little known is that Hartford was the original developer of Paradise Island, Bahamas, home of the Atlantis resort.)
Intrepid Museum
Home to the U.S.S. Intrepid aircraft carrier, the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum will reopen on Nov. 8, Veteran’s Day; come here on Nov. 2 to see the famous ship’s return (at, supposedly, approximately 1:30 p.m.) following its refurbishment in Staten Island. On the Hudson River’s Pier 86, the museum will feature a new layout and exhibits, and parts of it such as the fo’c’sle and machine shop will be newly accessible.
The ship’s aircraft, including Concorde, also will be dusted and returned.
Poets House
What an enlightened idea, a museum focusing on poetry. Poets House, steps from the Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park City, will open in April 2009 (some sections will open six months earlier) and chronicle the United States’ major contribution to poetry, as well as showcasing disciplines (one idea: a collection of Alexander Calder mobiles) that have associations with written verse.
Highlights include a glass-enclosed gallery, tentatively called “The Egg,” and an indoor-outdoor event space.
Museum for African Art
This 25-year-old museum never has had a permanent home, but that will change in 2010 when it moves to Fifth Ave. between 109th and 110th streets. The $80 million attraction will sit opposite the northeast corner of Central Park at the edge of Harlem and tell the story of African and African-diaspora culture through its art, and vice-versa.
It will be the first museum built on New York City’s famous Museum Mile since 1959, when the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened.
The Sports Museum of America
Opened in May, the SmA (its abbreviated name) was set up in collaboration with the halls of fame of 50 sports. The new home of the Heisman Trophy, one new initiative is that also it will house the first hall of fame dedicated solely to women in sports.
Films, photos and artifacts reside in 19 galleries, and a restaurant looks after game-sized appetites. Yards from the 7,000-pound Charging Bull statue near Wall Street, this is another bold step in Lower Manhattan becoming a major site for arts and culture (see Poets House above).
