The Met Breuer, New York

The Met Breuer. Photo, Ed Lederman

New YorkCulture

The Met Breuer, New York

NYC institutions complete game of musical chairs as the Met revive Marcel Breuer’s Brutalist masterpiece...

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has a new addition: The Met Breuer — whose press fact sheet comes with a handy pronunciation guide. Pronounced BROY-er (try saying that without a New Yoyk accent), it’s named after the Brutalist building’s designer, Marcel Lajos Breuer; one of the Bauhaus school’s first students, and a Modernist master.

The Met Breuer, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art

With the Whitney Museum of American Art shuffling along to its new Renzo Piano-designed location in October 2014, the gallery’s former Breuer-designed Madison Ave home needed a new occupant, and the Met obliged; a major, yet sensitive, update giving allowing for an expansion of their modern and contemporary art program — and completing an institution-sized game of musical chairs.

Under the guidance of Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, post-1966 additions have been swept out, Breuer’s original finishes cleaned and restored; the Hungarian-born émigré himself believed that materials became more dignified over time, and the patina of his building half a century on comes to life throughout a respectful refurbishment. Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible, featuring unfinished artwork from the Renaissance to present day, is the first major exhibition of the gallery’s inaugural season; early works of brilliant photographer Diane Arbus will be on show in July, with a look at Marcel Breuer’s architecture scheduled for fall.

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The Met Breuer
The Met Breuer

The Met Breuer. Photos, Ed Lederman

The Met Breuer
The Met Breuer
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Photography, The Metropolitan Museum of Art © 2016. Unless otherwise stated.