The Met Breuer Brings Modern and Contemporary Art to Whitney’s Old Home

“The Met Breuer Brings Modern and Contemporary Art to Whitney’s Old Home”

Architectural Record

By: Laura Raskin

“On March 18, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens an annex at Madison Avenue and 75th Street in Manhattan, it will be attempting to shrug off the ghost of a museum past.

The specter is the Whitney Museum of American Art, which called the iconic Marcel Breuer building on that corner home for nearly five decades. In an eight-year deal, the Met is leasing the Breuer building from the Whitney— which relocated to its dazzling new Renzo Piano–designed home last year—in an attempt to expand its Modern and contemporary-art presence.

…

Wagstaff and the Met worked closely with preservation architects Beyer Blinder Belle (BBB)—the Met’s master planner since 2013—to study Breuer’s life and the building, and then determine what to restore and how…” Breuer called the materials in this building materials of the earth. And he championed and specified the fact that natural materials age beautifully. They take on a patina,” says John Beyer, a BBB founding partner. “A challenge for any architect dealing with a masterpiece is knowing what not to do as much as what to do.”

Read more in the March issue of Architectural Record online.