The New Museum Respects the ‘Hood UPDATED

Arquitectonica’s Recent Wing for the Bronx Museum of the Arts
Architectural criticism’s big guns—Paul Goldberger (the New Yorker), Nicolai Ouroussoff (the NY Times) and James Russell (Bloomberg)—have already weighed in on the architectural strengths (the first two writers) and weaknesses (the last) of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA’s design for the new New Museum.
I think I can bring a slightly different perspective: I believe it’s relevant to compare the effect of the SANAA building’s exterior with that of another recent addition to New York museumdom that performs similar functions, in another gritty neighborhood, in a different borough—the Bronx Museum of the Arts (above).
As a born-and-bred Bronx-ite, I think I have a gut sense about apt interventions in modest neighborhoods (as opposed to the showy corporate and cultural centers of the city). And I think the two museum buildings by different architectural firms (Arquitectonica in the Bronx) both admirably understood the notion of elevating the surroundings while seeming to fit in (and doing so on a relatively modest budget). The architecture appears to respect and key off of the built environment of the neighborhood, rather than taking a posture that is condescendingly and discordantly aloof. And in both cases, I experienced this as a pleasant surprise.
On the Grand Concourse, where I grew up, that meant relating to a line-up of modestly vertical apartment buildings. On the Bowery, the context consists of squat, boxy structures. Arquitectonica took the verticality and sliced and streamlined it. SANAA took the boxes and sliced and scrambled them. Both firms decided to clad their interventions in shiny silver, to set them apart as enticingly distinctive.
It’s too bad that this current exhibition devoted to New Museum’s architects, now at Seattle’s Henry Art Gallery, could not be seen in New York…or maybe it still can.
UPDATE—Gentrification Alert: On WNYC‘s “Morning Edition” today, host Soterios Johnson interviewed New Museum director Lisa Phillips and director of special exhibitions Massimiliano Gioni, and got a prediction from Phillips that her institution’s new neighborhood may soon become “another alternative arts district.”
STILL TO COME: My photo essay on the New Museum’s new building.