New Museum

Stand on the pavement of the Bowery and look up. The building in front of you does not sit still. It is a stack of white boxes, each one pushed a little off-centre from the one below, as if someone set them down in a hurry. A fine metal mesh wraps every surface. In flat morning light it looks like paper. When clouds move overhead, the mesh turns grey, then silver, then almost white again.

This is the New Museum, one of the few museums in New York devoted entirely to contemporary art. That means art made by living artists, often very recently, and often by people who are not yet famous. The museum was founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker. She had worked as a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and she left with a clear idea. She wanted a place that would take risks on new work before the art world had decided what that work was worth.

Those first years were modest. The museum began in borrowed space, with a tiny staff and very little money. Later it moved to a storefront building on Broadway in SoHo, a neighbourhood that was then full of artists' lofts and galleries. Tucker liked to say that a museum should be a place of questions, not only answers. Her programme reflected that. Shows were political, experimental, sometimes uncomfortable, and they often introduced artists who became much better known years later.

In 2007, the museum opened this building on the Bowery. It was the first new art museum built from the ground up in lower Manhattan for a very long time. The design came from SANAA, the Tokyo studio led by the architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa. A few years after this building opened, the pair received the Pritzker Prize, which is often described as the highest award in architecture. Look again at those shifting boxes — this was one of their best-known projects in the United States.

The offset stacking is not only for show. Where one box steps back from the box below it, the architects placed skylights. Daylight falls into the galleries from above, along the edges of the rooms. Inside, many of the galleries are simple open spaces with no columns in the middle. Artists can hang, build, or fill the room however they like. The building is designed to stay quiet so that the art can be loud.

Now come a little closer to the facade. The skin is an expanded aluminium mesh. It is a single metal sheet that is cut and stretched until it opens into a pattern of small diamond holes. Behind it sits a solid wall. The mesh adds depth and a soft shimmer. It also has an industrial character that fits this street, which has long been lined with workshops, warehouses, and restaurant supply stores.

On the front of the building, you may see a rainbow-coloured sign that reads "Hell, Yes!" It is a work by the Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone. The phrase is cheerful, a little rude, and very New York. For many locals, that sign became a kind of informal logo for the museum. It suggests the institution's attitude in two words: enthusiasm first, permission later.

The street itself carries a long story. The name Bowery comes from an old Dutch word for a farm, from the time when this area was farmland outside the small colonial town at the southern tip of the island. By the nineteenth century, it had become a road of theatres, saloons, and cheap lodging houses. For much of the twentieth century, the Bowery was known as the city's skid row — a place of flophouses and hardship. Charitable missions have served people on this street for well over a century.

So the museum's arrival here was a bold choice. When it opened, the Bowery was already changing, but it still felt rough at the edges. Some people welcomed the museum. Others worried that it would speed up rising rents and push out older residents and businesses. Both views are part of the story. As you walk the block, you can still see the mix — new hotels and restaurants beside old lighting shops and kitchen supply stores.

Here is something many visitors miss. The New Museum is not only a place to look at art. It also runs an incubator called NEW INC, which supports artists, designers, and technologists working at the meeting point of art and new technology. In other words, the museum invests in the people who will make future exhibitions, not only in the objects themselves. It is an unusual idea for an art museum, and it fits Tucker's original spirit.

Another surprise is the museum's Triennial. Every few years, the museum gathers work by young artists from around the world into one large survey. The first edition, in 2009, carried the playful title "Younger Than Jesus". The title was a joke with a rule inside it: the artists were mostly under the age of thirty-three. Over time, the Triennial has become one way the art world takes the temperature of a new generation.

In recent years, the museum also planned to grow. An expansion designed by the architecture firm OMA was developed on the lot next door, adding more gallery space and room for public programmes. Because building projects and schedules change, it is worth checking what is open on the day you visit. Exhibitions here also change often, so the rooms you walk through today may look completely different in a few months.

Before you go inside, or as you walk away, take one more look up at the stack of boxes. Notice how the gaps between them catch the sky. Listen to the Bowery around you — delivery trucks, bicycle bells, conversations in several languages. This building was made to hold whatever comes next. Standing here, you are at the point where an old working street meets new and unfinished ideas.