[NYguy]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/ar...gn/26plan.html

Whitney Museum Plans New Building Downtown


The site near the High Line in the meatpacking district where the Whitney Museum of American Art plans to break ground next year.



By CAROL VOGEL
May 25, 2010

After 25 years of false starts, the board of the Whitney Museum of American Art has taken a step that will redefine the 80-year-old institution. It voted on Tuesday afternoon to begin construction on a building in the meatpacking district in Manhattan, to be completed by 2015, that will vastly increase the size and scope of the museum.

The vote was unanimous. Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney’s director, said after the meeting, “A year from now we will be breaking ground.”

...Without room to grow uptown, and without the income necessary to run two museums, the Whitney now faces the question of what to do with the Breuer building — which may end up being shared, at least temporarily, by another institution, perhaps the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The board met not at the museum, as it usually does, but in a conference room at the Standard Hotel on Washington Street, a block and a half from the new site. During the two-hour meeting, Leonard A. Lauder — the Whitney’s chairman emeritus and largest benefactor, and until now an opponent of the project — surprised everyone by voting in favor of the new building. Indeed, although there have been rumors for weeks that Mr. Lauder was considering resigning if the project went ahead, he spoke passionately in favor of it at the meeting.

“Downtown is a new city, a new nation. Why shouldn’t the Whitney be the museum of record there?” Mr. Lauder said in an interview.

He cited several reasons for his change of heart. In addition to the board’s having raised more money than was anticipated, and having done it more quickly, he said, “there is no better time to build than now, with construction costs and interest rates at an all-time low.”

“There is a new generation of people who have come on the board who are not rooted to the past,” Mr. Lauder said. “It would be unfair for someone like me who grew up near the Whitney to believe it should stay there.”

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http://worldarchitecturenews.com/ind...pload_id=14068
Whitney Museum OKs new downtown facility

The on-again, off-again decision to build a downtown branch of the Whitney Museum of American Art is back on again. The museum’s board voted Tuesday to begin construction of a new building in New York’s white-hot meatpacking district on a site next to the High Line entrance.

Designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, which also designed the Whitney’s now-cancelled uptown expansion, in collaboration with Cooper, Robertson & Partners, the new $680 million museum is expected to break ground a year from now with completion in 2015.

In concert with its decision to build downtown, the museum will be selling a group of brownstones adjacent its Marcel Breuer-designed Madison Avenue building, virtually precluding future expansion there. No word yet as to what will become of the uptown building, except to say that the Whitney Board is currently in talks with The Metropolitan Museum of Art regarding that institution’s use of the Breuer building as it undergoes a major renovation of its own.

The downtown Whitney will be a six-storey, 195,000-square foot, metal-clad building featuring a dramatic cantilevered entrance. It will house more than 50,00 square feet of galleries and 13,000 square feet of rooftop exhibition space together will classrooms, a research library, art conservation labs and multi-use indoor-outdoor space for film, video and performance art. It will also include a restaurant, café and bookstore.

Sharon McHugh