View from Gansevoort Street
They have compared it to a hospital, to what could be the headquarters of a pharmaceutical laboratory, to a factory... Obviously, the building that the Italian Renzo-Piano has designed as the new headquarters of the ** Whitney Museum in New York ** pays homage to the neighborhood in which it is located: the Meatpacking District . The large windows and sweeping views are a reminder of the old factories and slaughterhouses that surrounded (and still surround) the area. From the river, they say in the New York Times, it has “a slightly nautical air”, on purpose also to also celebrate the nearby docks where the Titanic should have docked.
Let's face it, the new Whitney, located at the foot of the high-line It is not a pretty building. It is not a building, which with its 28 thousand tons of steel , go through the eyes. Nor did he like the granite wall that Marcel Breuer built on the Upper East Side in 1966 to house the collection of this institution of contemporary American art, but today it is considered one of the masterpieces of architecture in New York, and the Whitney would still be there if it weren't for the fact that that house has outgrown it for your more than 22 thousand works , of which thousands, precisely because of that space problem, have never been exhibited.
Welcome to the new Whitney Museum
Probably the same thing happens to the building designed by Renzo. In a few years, we will not even remember that we confused this metallic mass with a hospital. Actually, it's something that happens as soon as you set foot in its lobby, or Piazza, as Piano has called it. Once inside, the new headquarters of the Whitney conquers any skeptic , art lovers and those who do not like museums.
The new Whitney has its beauty on the inside and we explain why you should convert it since it opens its doors next May 1 in a new mandatory visit in New York:
- the piazza or, more specifically, long, due to its rectangular shape . The museum lobby welcomes you with its large glass window, a very thin membrane that separates the museum from the street. Piano wanted the city to talk to the museum, and the museum to talk to the city, he wanted to break with the intimidation caused by the Breuer's building.
- The toasts and pizzas of the Untitled cafe, in the same Piazza, without having to pay the museum entrance fee; and the modern American cuisine menu of the The Studio Cafe , in the eighth. Danny Meyer, who was already in charge of the former headquarters cafe, still operates here, but the menus have been designed by Michael Anthony of the legendary Gramercy Tavern. Just to eat here, it's worth the visit.
The exterior of the Whitney Museum on the High Line
- Richard Artschwager's Elevators : one of the last works of the artist who died in 2013. The new Whitney it's a blank canvas for artists , is a museum for artists, to hang their works and for them to believe with and in it. And the first proof is those three huge lifts/works of art designed by Arschwager.
- The views: from the viewpoints towards the river and from the terraces towards the city. **You can see the Empire State and the new 1WTC **, and you will see some impressive sunsets across the hudson . The Whitney is a museum designed to “hang out”. After seeing a gallery, you end up on a terrace, or on the sofas overlooking the river. Always surrounded by art, from the chairs, to the facade or the walls.
- The galleries : invaded by natural light that enters from east and west, and in the case of the eighth floor also through the ceiling. They gain height from top to bottom, as contemporary works require more space, and they do not have columns. They are great and full of possibilities.
The revamped Meatpacking District museum
- The collection: America is Hard to See (America is difficult to see) is the museum's first exhibition, made up of more than 600 works from its own collection, a quarter of which had never been exhibited before. The curators of the Whitney have done an amazing job of selecting the best known and the least known. 115 years of American art (from 1900 to 2015), a very complete vision of the complexity of American art and society in this century , which marks a perfect start for all those future exhibitions that have already been announced, such as the retrospective dedicated to Frank Stella , or the first exhibition dedicated to the artist Rachel Rose , both in autumn… Give space and visibility to women artists is a basic objective of the museum, and we applaud it, after Rose, will come the exhibition dedicated to the filmmaker Laura Poitras , after his success with the documentary citizenfour ; and that of the Cuban Carmen Herrera (in autumn 2016) and that of Sophia Al Maria …
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'61 Pontiac, 1968/1969
America is Hard to See