This NYC Museum Is Getting A $550M Upgrade

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The city's Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously approved the $550 million construction plans for The Metropolitan Museum of Art's major new contemporary wing at a public meeting Tuesday afternoon.

The new wing, called the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing, will replace the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing to house the museum's art from the 20th and 21st centuries.

The commission also approved landscape changes to Central Park next to the museum, which would remove 13 mature trees but plant new trees along with other greenery.

With the commission's approval, the project will move on to the next phase, where the Met will need to receive a Certificate of Appropriateness permit before it can begin construction.

Brett Gaillard, the head of capital projects at The Met, said if all goes according to plan, construction on the new wing would start in summer 2026 and last three years.

Then, landscape work around the finished building would begin, and the new wing would be ready to open to the public by 2030.

"This is a project that has been a long time in the making and directly supports our mission, as well as aims to enhance and improve the relationship of the park and the museum," Gaillard said during the meeting.

According to Gaillard, the Met shared its plans with the five Community Boards surrounding Central Park, and all five issued resolutions in support of the building and the landscape.

The Friends of the Upper East Side Preservation Committee released a statement Tuesday saying they were "happy" to support the redesign but had a few concerns over the plans as they finalize.

"The committee raises a significant concern regarding the proposed removal of 13 mature trees. We request a clear and detailed restatement of the reasons necessitating this removal, as articulated by the Conservancy," the statement reads.

Inside the plans for the new Tang Wing

The plans for the Tang Wing were designed by architect Frida Escobedo to increase gallery space by more than 50 percent and bring modern, airy rooms to the historic building, which would better suit the scale of contemporary art, museum administrators said.

The new wing would include a three-story base with a recessed fourth floor and a further setback fifth floor, which will include a cafe.

Inside, the new wing will house the museum's ever-growing collection of 20th and 21st-century art and feature different-sized rooms with varied ceiling heights to accommodate large-scale works, museum spokespeople said.

According to the museum, the five-story wing will remain within the existing building's 123,000-square-foot footprint and rise only as high as the original height of the 1880 wing in the center of the museum complex.

Currently, the existing wing's layout has elevators, stairs, restrooms, and mechanical spaces interrupting the flow of visitors to the collection, and one of the existing floors is only accessible by a staircase, making it inaccessible, the museum said. The new construction would increase accessibility, administrators said.

The Met put forth two applications to the commission — one for the building itself, and one for the landscape changes around the building. Both were approved on Tuesday.

Watch the whole meeting here.

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