MoMA Sells Its Plot and Plots New Galleries

CultureGrrl told you more than a month ago that MoMA was talking to real estate developers who wanted to buy MoMA-owned land adjacent to the museum. They were discussing “the possibility of constructing a mixed-use building that would combine private commercial functions with more space for MoMA, probably to be used as galleries,” I reported then.
Now the deal’s been done.
Carol Vogel reports in today’s NY Times:
The Museum of Modern Art is selling its last vacant parcel of land in Midtown for $125 million to Hines, an international real estate developer based in Houston, the museum’s director said yesterday.
As part of the deal Hines is to construct a mixed-use building on West 54th Street that will connect to the museum’s second- , fourth- and fifth-floor galleries, said the director, Glenn D. Lowry. He said the project would afford about 50,000 square feet of additional exhibition space for the Modern’s painting and sculpture collections.
Now that he’s got that done, what’s Glenn going to do with the property he bought next to the former MoMA QNS in Queens?