After 48 years on Madison Avenue, the Whitney Museum of American Art has made a new home in the Meatpacking District, nestled right between the High Line and the Hudson river.
Designed by architect Renzo Piano, the $422 million, 220,000 square foot structure offers visitors larger and more flexible galleries; a tremendous amount of outdoor space for sculptures and performances; a theater for lectures, performances, and panels; a study center and expanded conservation program as well as the museums first education center, which allows visitors to engage with the artists.
“The [new] building offers us opportunities that we have never had before,” Adam Weinberg, the museum’s director, said. “We set out to design additional spaces for our collection as well as spaces for artists with the flexibility to match their boundless imagination. The building is not only a magnificent site to view art, it’s also the material for artists to work on, in and above.”
The inaugural exhibition, America is Hard to See, reflects on the history of art in the United States for over 115 years exclusively through the lens of the museum’s permanent collection, which consists of more than 22,000 objects, and fills the entire building with over 600 works of art by 400 artists. The building opens to the public on May 1, but The Daily Beast is offering you a sneak peek inside.
Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast
