The New Museum is Almost Open

The new home of the New Museum for Contemporary Art is almost done. It's on the Bowery in a sort of a rougher section of SoHo filled with restaurant supply stores and homeless shelters. The neighborhood is ripe for gentrification, though, and this museum is the beginning of the end of the old Bowery. The stacked metal box design is by Tokyo-based architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA Ltd. Back in 2003, when the New Museum announced the selection of the architects, they predicted a 2006 opening. Now it's supposed to be December 1, 2007.

The New Museum was founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, one day after she was fired from her job at the Whitney Museum as a curator. It's had a number of locations since.