What began in a rented townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side has grown to become an internationally recognized preeminent source for exhibitions and publications related to historical and contemporary African art. The Museum for African Art will finally find a permanent home along Manhattan’s “Museum Mile” and will be open to the public next April. Designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP, the museum will bring the prestigious row of museums of Manhattan to Harlem, one of the country’s most important centers of historic and contemporary African-American culture.
More about the museum and more images after the break.
The museum will own and occupy about 75,000 square feet in a mixed-use joint-development project. This dramatic increase in public space, in addition to the museum’s new location will provide adequate space for significantly more exhibitions, public programs, and education initiatives; thus enabling the museum to serve larger audiences.
The new Museum, which faces Central Park to the west, is distinguished on its north and west facades by trapezoidal windows with bronze-finished aluminum mullions that create a dynamic “pattern”. Visitors will enter the new Museum through a soaring glass atrium that measures 45 feet high. Curving African etimoe wood form one of the walls and the ceiling of the 5,000 square ft of informal exhibition space.
The second floor provides 15,000 square feet of flexible gallery space which will typically be configured as three rotating exhibition galleries that may be installed individually or as a group. The third floor of the Museum will house the library, offices, and a gracious event space with a roof terrace overlooking Central Park.
