One of the absolute best parts of my recent gallery-hopping trip to New York was catching the inaugural exhibition at the new location of the New Museum of Contemporary Art (newmuseum.org), which, in an effort to deliberately avoid the gentrified, domesticated art scene in its native SoHo, relocated to a purpose-built six story structure in the Bowery, a gritty district otherwise only notable for its Chinese restaurant equipment suppliers and smattering of punk-rock clubs.
The building itself is fantastic looking: from the street, its glass storefront blends in (to a degree) with the format of the rest of the shops, but it rises in a series of staggered boxes (lit by skylights) that create large, glowing “white-cube” style exhibition spaces inside. The space is quirky enough to be interesting, but these quirks are kept (in a very modernist move) very separate from the art 
(a contrast to the Guggenheim, for instance, which forces artwork to conform to its irregular spaces). These quirks include a bright green interior elevator, corrugated metal stairs (which match the metal sheeth of the building), and some bizarre elongated stairways.
We happened to go when the sky-room on the sixth floor was open. (This was an awesome way to see the city and a real “ooh-ahh” moment for a little redneck child like myself).
I’m devoting a whole presentation later this semester to the exhibition itself (“Unmonumental”), so I’ll touch on that in a later post.
Perspectives:
