Bigger, more beautiful, more expensive: The Museum of Modern Art in New York was reopened after four months of renovation work and featuring the new “David Geffen Wing” worth 450 million.

The wing is named after the Californian music billionaire, who donated 100 million dollars for the reconstruction (David Rockefeller, whose mother Abby Aldrich founded the museum 90 years ago, contributed 200 million dollars). Constructed on the western side of the building on West 53rd Street, the wing extends to the basements of a high-rise apartment building by Jean Nouvel that was built at the same time. The site of the American Folk Art Museum had to give way to it – very much to the annoyance of the preservationists. This is no surprise for a museum connected to the Who’s Who of New York’s real-estate industry (the American Folk Art Museum itself is nowadays located at Columbus Circle).

The reconstruction increases the exhibition surface of one of the world’s biggest art museums by one third, about 5,000 square kilometres. The MoMA now comprises more than 60 galleries on six floors, a continuous sequence of rooms. The architects are Diller Scofidio + Renfro, known for the “Highline” and the Lincoln Center renovation, along with global design and architecture firm Gensler.

Almost like an Apple store?

Not everyone is completely thrilled. Michael Kimmelman, the New York Times architecture critic, described the construction as intelligent and precise, almost like an Apple store, yet “slightly soulless”. The MoMA would have turned the block into a canyon of steel and glass, bringing to mind the “headquarters of Darth Vader’s hedge fund”. Only the façade is dark, though. On the inside, the new construction is flooded with light; the galleries, a series of bright rooms grouped around the lobby, provide views of the sculpture garden. The lobby has been expanded as well; visitors no longer enter the museum through a dark corridor, but through a bright hall. Moreover, a display window has been fitted, allowing passers-by to catch a glimpse of the exhibits. There’s also a terrace restaurant on the sixth floor.

A continuous rotation

The extension was vital, since the museum has been overcrowded with three million visitors a year. Moreover, it enables a new way of presenting the art exhibits. From now on, the galleries are going to be mixed up every six months and supplemented by existing properties as well as new acquisitions; a continuous rotation. The MoMA incorporates an enormous collection of 140,000 art objects, most of which have been tucked away in the archive so far. The rotation will involve a great deal of work by the curators, in addition to good orientation skills by the visitors.