After moving to the Meatpacking District in 2015, the museum could open an annex near its new location, in what is now Gansevoort Square. Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, announced a project to renovate this neighborhood.
The project aims to completely redevelop the neighborhood to make it a “cultural center open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week”. The urban renovation plan concerns 6,000 m² of land and buildings, including a building housing a market that the museum covets. The space will be redeveloped with 600 new housing units and an extension of the High Line, the green promenade built on a former railway line.
Thanks to an agreement with the city, the museum was the first to make an offer to invest in the old market. If the bid is successful, the museum will be able to expand its buildings with new exhibition galleries and spaces dedicated to educational programs.
The growing number of visitors (300,000 in 2024), attracted by the new free offers, would have influenced the museum in its expansion plans, indicates Hyperallergic. Recently, the Whitney Museum of Art experienced a small revolution by becoming free on certain evenings and weekends. The museum wishes to continue on this path by offering free admission to under 25s from December 2024.
The Whitney Museum of Art, founded in 1931, was originally located on the Upper East Side on Madison Avenue. The museum moved in 1966 to the Breuer building, bought in 2023 by Sotheby’s for $95 million (around 89 million euros). It moved in 2015 to a new building designed by architect Renzo Piano in the Meatpacking district, doubling its exhibition space with 4,600 m² of galleries. The museum has a collection of nearly 21,000 works of contemporary art, with a high concentration of American artists from the 20th century to today.
