OMA completes New Museum “pair” expansion project in New York

by Ben Dreith

OMA completes “highly connected, but highly individual” expansion of New York’s New Museum

Architecture studio OMA has mirrored the programme of the SANAA-designed New Museum in Manhattan with an extension that has a unique profile and facade treatment.

Led by OMA‘s New York office, the New Museum expansion features a ground-up build abutting the structure Japanese architecture studio SANAA designed for the institution in 2007.

OMA’s project, its first public building in the city, doubles the footprint of the contemporary art museum to 120,000 square feet (11,000 square metres), adding much-needed social and gallery space and additional egress for the expanding number of visitors.

OMA New York principal Shohei Shigematsu said the conditions for the expansion were unusual, given the relative contemporaneity of the SANAA building and referenced the idea of a “twin or pair” in his studio’s design.

“We were very careful in actually understanding what it means to build contemporary against contemporary,” Shigematsu told Dezeen.

“We actually looked at the idea of the pairs, or that notion of the pair.”

New Museum extension
A massive staircase fills the atrium at the front of the building. Photo by Jason Keen

He recalled a set of reference images, such as that of a performance of Marina Abramovic and her then-husband Ulay standing naked facing each other in a doorway for in 1977 and of the fixed-service structures that support an orbital rocket pre-launch.

“I often joked, when I had to present this to the board members, that finding the love of your life is one of the most difficult things, right?” he said. “So this is what we were doing here.”

“It’s highly connected, but highly individual too,” he continued.

OMA museum project in New York City
The metal-mesh staircase was painted on the inside to produce a moire effect. Photo by Jason O’Rear.

Scrapping the initial notion of maintaining the facade of the pre-existing, mid-rise industrial building, OMA designed a building that resembles a pentagon in section. It has a steep recess at ground level and a deep setback above tapering towards a central point, where it “kisses” the facade of the SANAA building.

From the north, the structure is mostly obscured by the taller SANAA building, but it extends deeper into the block.

“It’s actually quite surprising, because from outside, it’s not so screaming for presence, but as you enter, you feel the depth,” said Shigematsu.

New Museum extension interior
Gaps in the facade near the top allow views out and up. Photo by Jason O’Rear.

The faceted facade was clad in laminated glass with metal mesh that recalls the aluminium mesh of the SANAA building, while remaining distinct.

Immediately inside the street-facing walls, an atrium between the galleries and the facade allowed for a winding staircase that connects at each landing to the levels of both buildings.

New Museum extension interior
It nearly doubles the gallery, programming and office space for the New Museum. Photo by Jason Keen

At the fourth level, there is a soaring columnless space with an auditorium that faces a glass-filled void in the facade, which has views out into the Bowery.

Shigematsu referred to the staircase atrium as a “social and visible condenser” that allows the whole museum complex to become more “open and communicative”.

New Museum extension interior
The office space at the top of the building was referred to as its “brain” by OMA. Photo by Jason Keen

Shigematsu said the vernacular front-facade fire escape played into the articulation of the stair.

Further voids in the facade hold balconies and additional panes of glass without the metal mesh form stripes running down the side of the building, giving the building a sense of publicness and transparency.

New Museum extension informed by pairs
Outdoor balconies feature along the building’s upper slope. photo by Jason O’Rear.

OMA’s building sits at the junction of a three-way intersection and faces Prince Street, acting as a terminus. The entry into the newly programmed entrance extends the street into the building and upwards, up the new staircase.

At ground level, the slope of the OMA facade was articulated again at the north side, folding inwards. This exposed more of the SANAA building, leading the team to bring in additional material to extend the original facade.

This double fold created a triangular exterior courtyard. Next to it, the primary entrance into the museum leads into a lobby that includes the unticketed ground floors of both structures.

A massive portal door leads from the original lobby into the ground floor of the extension, which centres around a concealed restaurant, clad in expanded cork painted with silver leaf, blending it into the metal ceilings and polycarbonate-clad elevator core.

New Museum extension informed by SANAA building
It sits deeper in the block but also lower than the neighbouring SANAA building. Photo by Jason O’Rear

The restaurant acts as an enclosed courtyard within the lobby, and the plan is for it to be accessible via the lobby as well as via Freeman Alley at the back of the structure after the museum has closed. Inside, it features walls and ceiling also clad in cork, this time left unpainted.

It has textured glass that obscures the interior of the restaurant from the lobby, but allows restaurant goers to look out.

In order to allow for free movement on the ground level, the ticketing was pushed to the stairwells at the front of the building.

New Museum extension by OMA
The extension terminates a street. Photo by Jason Keen

The winding stairway crisscrosses the atrium at severe angles and is clad with more mesh, painted green on the inside to create a moire effect. Exposed I-beams and highly polished meshed floors create a collage of industrial materials.

New galleries echo the relatively simple format of the original, with high ceilings and white walls.

The gallery spaces run for the first three storeys, while above level four, incubator spaces and offices form what the studio called the “brain” of the building, conceptually and formally.

New Museum extension
The faceted facade creates a triangular exterior courtyard. Photo by Jason Keen

New Museum artistic director Massimo Gioni referred to the prismatic quality of the new building, saying it reflects the non-collecting museum’s mission to “refract” artistic messages from all over the world.

For Shigematsu, the build represents a culmination of arts and culture work in New York for OMA and recalls the studio’s other recent museum, the faceted glass extension for Buffalo AKG Art Museum. He was also part of the failed bid for a Whitney Museum extension in 2001.

“It took 20 years, but gave me the kind of holistic understanding of the ecosystem of art,” he said.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be able to do a building of this calibre in Manhattan. So we are very blessed.”

OMA’s founder, Rem Koolhaas has long theorised about New York, with his 1979 book Delirious New York being a significant work of architectural theory.

Other recent museum projects by OMA include the aluminium-clad Gallery of the Kings at the Museo Egizio in Italy 

The photography is by Jason O’Rear and Jason Keen.


SANAA Creates a Cluster of Volumes Housing a Museum and Library to Anchor a New District in Taichung

Taichung, Taiwan

By Izzy Kornblatt

Taichung Green Museumbrary
Photo © Iwan BaanTaichung Green Museumbrary.

February 9, 2026

Curving surfaces that draw you from room to room, soft light, layered glass, walls in white and carpets in gray: perhaps SANAA projects ought to be understood not so much as separate creations than as the far-flung fragments of a single ethereal world. From this view, it seems fitting that the newest such fragment, a museum-cum-library in the Taiwanese city of Taichung, feels remarkably familiar—a continuation, in form, material, and concept, of much that has come before. Almost everything here is recognizable, from the formal conceit, an intersecting array of eight boxy, steel-framed volumes (see the firm’s 2022 addition to the Art Gallery of New South Wales), to the facades, many glazed, all wrapped in silvery aluminum mesh (see the 2008 New Museum in New York City), not to mention the winding ramps and staircases that jump from floor to floor, pavilion to pavilion (see the 2010 Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne, Switzerland, among other projects). As a whole, the building takes its place in a longer series of projects that explore the mixing of the rational and irrational—the former represented by the rigor of a precise architectural vocabulary, the latter by the freedom accorded by the informal composition of elements.

Facades feature an outer layer of expanded metal mesh. Photo © Iwan Baan, click to enlarge.

In Taichung, this exploration unfolds against a specific urban context—emptiness. Initially designed as part of a 2013 competition held by the city, the building is an early element in the redevelopment of the former Shuinan military airport in western Taichung; today, it stands at the edge of a 165-acre park at the center of the new district, facing out toward vacant parcels of land that the city government is now in the process of selling to developers. Doubtless one of the city’s aims in undertaking the project, and in hiring a Pritzker Prize–winning architect, was to establish the area, bounded to the north by highways and to the west by an aircraft factory, as an attractive place of culture. The plan is by no means unrealistic. Just a few miles south, the Toyo Ito–designed National Taichung Theater (2016) anchors Taichung’s 7th Redevelopment Zone, a newly built district of gleaming offices, department stores, and luxury high-rises.

A pond is built from mirror-finished stainless steel. Photo © Iwan Baan

The majority of the volumes are lifted up on pilotis, opening up the building’s ground level to serve as a set of shaded, subtly graded plazas linking the park behind to the future neighborhood in front. Interspersed are entrances to various programmatic spaces—an escalator up to the main library lobby, a direct entrance to a children’s library, a twisting ramp to the museum galleries—and a set of round, one-story structures housing a shop, café, information booths, and a spiral stair down to underground spaces including an auditorium and a parking garage. Both the library and museum entries are accessed from an area that is enclosed in mesh; this space can be locked when the two institutions are closed, but the remainder of the ground floor will remain open 24 hours a day.

Plazas on the ground floor are connected to the park. Photo © Iwan Baan

Floating stairs and walkways link the library and museum. Photo © Iwan Baan

The building is officially called the Taichung Green Museumbrary—a portmanteau that sounds better in Chinese than English—and indeed its most distinctive programmatic element is that it co-locates the main branch of the Taichung Public Library system with the newly founded Taichung Art Museum. (Taichung has long been home to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, but until now did not have a municipal art museum.) In keeping with the possibilities suggested by this combination, SANAA, working with architect of record Ricky Liu & Associates, has not limited either museum or library to a single volume. Instead, galleries and reading rooms are each distributed across different volumes, and visitors move freely across the complex: there is almost always more than one way to get from point A to point B. On two of the building’s six floors, floating walkways link the library and museum, enabling you to cross between them midway through a visit. The uppermost walkway, on the fifth floor, brings you outdoors into a mesh-enclosed box crisscrossed by ramps and dubbed the “culture forest,” an expansive space that does not yet, but ought to, have places to sit and relax.

For Sejima, the library and museum offer “two different ways of learning,” and placing both together raises the possibility of the programs’ shaping each other—from exhibitions in which books could be borrowed or library functions incorporating artworks to broader ways of “expanding our thinking and imagination.” At present, there is not much evidence of this happening. The museum and library remain separate: the reading rooms and galleries, as currently programmed, don’t stray from the modes of operation and organization that we have all learned to expect from these institutions.

For now, more immediate concerns dominate. At the complex’s fanfare-filled opening in December, Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-Yen voiced the hope that the Museumbrary “makes the world see Taichung, and places Taichung on the world’s stage”—a comment in which one can detect both familiar civic boosterism and a Taiwan-specific desire for the international recognition that the island has long been denied in the realm of politics. Not surprisingly, the galleries, all vast, flexible boxes designed before the museum was founded, seem best suited to sensational, Instagram-friendly installations of the sort associated with the global art circuit; and the initial set of exhibitions, which brings together a dizzying array of work from around the world with a vaguely environmental theme, only furthers this impression. The scale of the galleries was a “big challenge,” says museum director Nicole Yi-Hsin Lai, and some of the loveliest works on display, including a set of paintings of the transformed landscape of central Taiwan by the artist Hung Tien-Yu, feel minuscule by comparison.

I preferred the library reading rooms, with their curtain-filtered windows, intimate nooks, and snaking SANAA–designed tables and benches. These are spaces that reward wandering: an unexpected staircase transports you to a hidden terrace, a small exhibition teaches you about the history of encyclopedias. It’s all impeccably stylish. Meeting areas are encased in curving walls of acrylic. The soft hum of air-conditioning emerges from registers embedded in the bookshelves. Yet, as with so much of SANAA’s work, the effect is gentle, tranquil, rather than precious. Somehow, these architects again and again manage to create uncommon, daring, ultra-designed things that are nonetheless comfortable and unpretentious. There is something important about this that is not easy to put a finger on. I suspect that it relates to a certain attitude toward form-making. SANAA rose to prominence during the era of starchitecture and its formal acrobatics, and now Sejima and Nishizawa too are sought out by clients around the world looking to build signature buildings—hence the commission in Taichung. And yet, even as the shimmering, diaphanous Museumbrary fulfills the demands imposed upon it—that it attract the attention of foreign media, establish the legitimacy of a new district, and so on—it does so without the self-importance common with starchitecture; that is, without naively presenting itself as radical either in its formal inventiveness or its capacity to engender cultural change.

Perhaps this is where the understated frankness of Sejima and Nishizawa’s work comes from: an acceptance of the limits of what form can do. Where they find agency to intervene in the world of their own accord is neither in big, brash gestures nor in obsessively resolved details. Instead, it is in subtle, calibrated moves—in providing ample space for chance encounters and discoveries in the reading rooms, in treating the ground level as an unrestricted public space, in holding open the possibility for institutional boundaries to one day be blurred.

Image courtesy SANAA

Image courtesy SANAA

Image courtesy SANAA

Credits

Architect:
SANAA — Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa; principals; Takayuki Hasegawa, Takashige Yamashita, Takayuki Furuya, Asano Yagi, Kota Fukuhara, Amira Ho, design team

Architect of Record:
Ricky Liu & Associates

Engineers:
Takenaka Corporation (MEP); Sasaki and Partners, Hsin-yeh Engineering Consultants (structural)

Consultants:
VIA (facade)

General Contractor:
Reiju Construction

Client:
Taichung City Government

Size:
624,000 square feet

Cost:
Withheld

Completion:
December 2025

snøhetta plans spiraling galleries with curved glass facades for beijing art museum

Developed in collaboration with Beijing Institute of Architectural Design, the project marks Snøhetta’s second major cultural commission in the Chinese capital after the Beijing Library. Set within the rapidly developing eastern district, the museum takes shape as a large-scale civic building positioned to support Beijing’s expanding cultural infrastructure while addressing the everyday rhythms of the surrounding neighborhood.

The program spans more than 110,000 square meters and accommodates fine art, contemporary practice, design, and forms of intangible cultural heritage. Alongside exhibition spaces, the building includes areas for research, storage, education, and public gathering. The ambition centers on a museum that operates as a civic interior capable of both hosting large audiences and supporting quieter forms of study.

A DESIGN DRIVEN BY THE CONCEPT OF ‘VISION’

Snøhetta, together with BIAD, frames its proposed Beijing Art Museum around the idea of ‘vision,’ understood as both the act of looking and the responsibility of stewardship. This concept guides spatial organization as collections are gathered inward while views are opened outward, This way, art is displayed in dialogue with the surrounding city.

The museum sits directly above an active metro line and incorporates a transit node at its base. From this infrastructural core, spaces expand outward in a radial composition. Curved, layered facades introduce a soft edge to the volume to mediate between interior galleries and exterior public space. The surface articulation encourages movement around the building and supports a continuous relationship between architecture and landscape.

Beijing Art Museum snøhettagalleries spiral outward to frame views of the surrounding district | visualization © Proloog

A LARGE CIRCULAR ATRIUM

At the center of Snøhetta’s Beijing Art Museum, a large circular atrium organizes circulation and orientation. The space rises through multiple levels, drawing daylight deep into the plan and establishing visual connections across floors. Semi-open exhibition zones and social areas line the atrium, creating moments for pause and encounter alongside more controlled gallery environments.

Primary galleries, storage, and support spaces wrap the atrium in a gradual spiral, extending into outward-facing volumes that frame views across Tongzhou. These projecting forms allow visitors to alternate between focused engagement with artworks and broader awareness of the city beyond the walls. The experience emphasizes movement, orientation, and shared visibility across the building.

Beijing Art Museum snøhettaa radial massing strategy organizes the building around a central atrium | visualization © Proloog

LANDSCAPING CONNECTS THE MUSEUM WITH THE CITY

The surrounding landscape continues the radial geometry of the architecture, shaping plazas, planted areas, and outdoor exhibition zones. Paths and open spaces support informal gathering and public use throughout the day. Architecture, interior, and landscape read as a continuous spatial field that extends the museum’s presence into the district.

Environmental strategies include rooftop photovoltaic panels and an integrated water management system aligned with sponge city principles. These measures support energy generation and seasonal water control while contributing to long-term resilience.

Construction began on December 31st, 2025, with completion planned for 2029.

Beijing Art Museum snøhettathe museum builds on Snøhetta’s previously built Beijing Library | visualization © Snøhetta

project info:

name: Beijing Art Museum

architect: Snøhetta | @snohetta

location: Beijing, China

collaborator: BIAD 

status: ongoing

area: 118,861 square meters

visualizations: © Snøhetta, © Proloog | @proloog.tv

client: Beijing Fine Art Academy
construction management: Beijing Investment Group Co.,Ltd,
concept, schematic design: Snøhetta, BIAD
construction design: BIAD

Art Museum of The China Sculpture Institute / CVA Design

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I. Project Overview: Geography and Culture – Nestled in Shenshan Park in the downtown area of Wuhu, Anhui Province, the Art Museum of the China Sculpture Institute is an urban renewal project renovated from a disused greenhouse. Its home, Wuhu Sculpture Park, stands as China’s first thematic art space that organically integrates sculpture culture with natural landscapes. Spanning an expansive 8.2 hectares, the park infuses sculptural art—known as “three-dimensional fine art”—into the poetic scenery of mountains and waters, forging a distinctive urban cultural landscape. Boasting picturesque views across all four seasons, the park creates an open and vibrant public art interface together with the sculptures, and has now emerged as one of the most popular urban sculpture parks among citizens nationwide.

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II. Translation of Local Cultural Heritage – “Jiuzi” is the ancient name of Wuhu, signifying “Jiuzi bird perching by the water, brimming with vitality”. Drawing inspiration from the imagery of “Jiuzi bird alighting on the waterfront”, the art museum echoes the local natural and historical heritage. In accordance with the traditional Chinese five-element theory (Wuxing), the exhibition area is divided into five thematic sections corresponding to Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. More than a mere classification system for material forms, the five-element theory represents a cognitive framework centered on movement, transformation, and interconnection. The museum adopts the five states embodied by the elements—Metal (convergence), Wood (growth), Water (permeation), Fire (dissolution), and Earth (integration)—to construct a narrative structure where sculptures and space interact and resonate with each other.

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III. Design Approach and Urban Integration – Breaking free from the closed exhibition model, the art museum has transformed into an open urban cultural hub. The design preserves the original architectural form and skillfully adopts the “borrowed scenery” technique of classical Chinese gardens, striving to blur the boundaries between architecture and nature. This approach allows the exhibition spaces inside and outside the venue—including indoor galleries, outdoor green spaces, and waterfront exhibition areas—to permeate one another, forming a harmonious and interconnected exhibition field.

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The space is activated three-dimensionally both vertically and horizontally: natural light filtering through side windows creates soft illumination; elevated winding corridors offer unique bird’s-eye views of large-scale sculptures; and the water-adjacent exhibition halls together with circular pathways further extend the viewing circulation. Collectively, these elements evoke a visual poetry where artworks seem to float amidst light, shadow, and rippling water.

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Art Museum of The China Sculpture Institute / CVA Design - Exterior Photography, Concrete

IV. Sustainable Construction and Cultural Empowerment – The art museum fully embodies the eco-friendly concept throughout its construction process. The main structure adopts a steel frame system, and the facade integrates extra-large concrete hanging panels with triple-glazed Low-E glass curtain walls, paired with a high-efficiency thermal insulation system to achieve low-energy consumption operation. The design also makes full use of natural elements: the shifting skylight and cloud shadows across time endow static sculptures with dynamic vitality; meanwhile, the mirrored flooring, through the interplay of virtual and real reflections, expands the physical dimensions of the space and enriches the viewers’ sensory experience. As a result, the building itself becomes a giant sculpture that interacts harmoniously with the surrounding mountains, water systems, vegetation, and light. Like a “time sculpting machine”, it continuously explores the infinite possibilities among nature, architecture, and art.

SANAA’s taichung art museum opens in taiwan with translucent dual-layer metal facade

SANAA's taichung art museum opens in taiwan with translucent dual-layer metal facade

Taichung Art Museum by SANAA opens to the public

SANAA’s Taichung Art Museum, part of the newly completed Taichung Green Museumbrary, opens today, December 13th, 2025 in TaiwanThe project integrates the city’s central library with a metropolitan art museum, establishing a combined cultural facility that presents a new institutional model.

The Taichung Green Museumbrary sits on the northern edge of Central Park, a 67-hectare green space within the 254-hectare Shuinan Trade and Economic Park, formerly a military airport decommissioned in 2004. Positioned at the heart of this redevelopment area, the project has been described as Taiwan’s most significant cultural initiative of 2025. SANAA’s design follows the guiding idea of creating ‘a library in a park and an art museum in a forest.’ The building is lifted above ground level, allowing natural light and park breezes to move freely through shaded plazas that provide open, permeable access from all sides.

Its inaugural exhibition, A Call of All Beings, brings together more than 70 artists and collectives from 20 countries. The show unfolds across galleries and public spaces through video, painting, sculpture, installation, archival material, artists’ books, and 24 newly commissioned, site-specific works, accompanied by performances, workshops, and talks exploring human and multispecies coexistence.

SANAA's taichung art museum opens in taiwan with translucent dual-layer metal facadeSANAA unveils the Taichung Art Museum as part of the Green Museumbrary | all images by YHLAA – Yi Hsien Lee

An Open Plan Connecting Culture and Nature

The plan dissolves traditional divisions between museum and library spaces within an open and inclusive interior. Reading areas and exhibition zones are designed to overlap, encouraging cross-programming and interaction. The library will house over one million physical and digital resources. On the rooftop, the design team at SANAA organizes an outdoor garden that offers views of Central Park and the Taichung skyline. Conceived as both a public landscape and a cultural extension of the building, the rooftop enhances the continuity between built and natural environments.

The dual-layer facade combines high-performance glass or metal cladding with an outer layer of aluminum expanded metal mesh. This silvery veil produces a sense of transparency while improving environmental performance. The facade and lifted volume emphasize lightness, openness, and integration with the surrounding park. At ground level, shaded plazas act as public thresholds where the city meets the museum and library.

SANAA's taichung art museum opens in taiwan with translucent dual-layer metal facadethe dual-layer facade combines glass or metal cladding with expanded aluminum mesh

SANAA's taichung art museum opens in taiwan with translucent dual-layer metal facadethe mesh screen improves environmental performance while shaping the building’s identity

SANAA's taichung art museum opens in taiwan with translucent dual-layer metal facadethe outdoor garden functions as both a public space and cultural extension

SANAA's taichung art museum opens in taiwan with translucent dual-layer metal facadethe cultural complex combines a metropolitan art museum with the city’s central library

SANAA's taichung art museum opens in taiwan with translucent dual-layer metal facadethe building volume is lifted above the ground to allow light and breeze to pass through

SANAA's taichung art museum opens in taiwan with translucent dual-layer metal facadereading areas and exhibition zones are arranged to overlap and encourage interaction

SANAA's taichung art museum opens in taiwan with translucent dual-layer metal facadethe library is planned to hold over one million physical and digital resources

SANAA's taichung art museum opens in taiwan with translucent dual-layer metal facadeshaded plazas beneath the structure create open and permeable public access

SANAA's taichung art museum opens in taiwan with translucent dual-layer metal facadethe design concept is described as ‘a library in a park and an art museum in a forest’

project info:

name: Taichung Art Museum

architect: SANAA | @sanaa_jimusho

location: Taichung, Taiwan

photographer: YHLAA – Yi Hsien Lee | @nevermind1107

retoucher: YHLAA – Kane Liou

Tadao Ando unveils twisting design for Dubai Museum of Art

Amy Peacock28 October 2025

Japanese architect Tadao Ando has unveiled the design for an art museum in Dubai, which will be housed in a rounded, twisting building overlooking the emirate’s natural saltwater creek.

Renders of the five-storey Dubai Museum of Art reveal a curving building finished with white walls, punctuated by triangular windows as they swoop and twist upwards.

Dubai Museum of Art by Tadao Ando
Tadao Ando has revealed designs for Dubai Museum of Art

Designed by Pritzker Prize-winner Ando for Dubai-based conglomerate Al-Futtaim Group, Dubai Museum of Art, also known as DUMA, is hoped to become a cultural landmark for artists and art enthusiasts.

Its distinctive silhouette draws on the sea and pearls and will be raised on a circular platform that extends over Dubai Creek.

Dubai Museum of Art by Tadao Ando
The building will have a curving shape informed by the sea

Gallery spaces will be located on the first and second floors, illuminated by a central circular skylight designed to cast light with a pearl-like shimmer.

A VIP lounge and restaurant will be situated on the top floor, where full-height glazing will open onto a sheltered outdoor terrace with panoramic views of Dubai.

Elsewhere in the museum will be a library, study rooms and spaces to host initiatives dedicated to training young creatives.

“The Dubai Museum of Art is more than an architectural landmark,” said Al-Futtaim Group CEO Omar Al Futtaim. “It is a cultural statement that reflects Dubai’s openness to creativity and affirms its role in connecting cultures and celebrating talent from around the world.”

“We are especially proud to have entrusted the design to the world-renowned architect Tadao Ando, whose architecture speaks the language of light, silence, and soul,” he continued.

“In Dubai, his vision for the Museum of Art will stand as a serene dialogue between nature, water, and the human spirit, a masterpiece of restraint and emotion that embodies both ingenuity and timeless elegance, perfectly capturing the depth of his philosophy.”

Render of a gallery interior by Tadao Ando
Galleries will be located on Dubai Museum of Art’s first and second floors

Dubai Museum of Art will exhibit contemporary artworks by established and emerging artists, while its event spaces will be used for artist talks, panel discussions, educational events and art fairs.

“The Dubai Museum of Art will be a new beacon for the city, enhancing its arts scene and further strengthening its global cultural status,” said Dubai ruler Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

“Dubai has become a destination of choice for creatives from around the world, home to communities and industries working together to accelerate the growth of the creative economy,” he continued.

“This new cultural landmark advances our strategic goal to position Dubai as a global hub for creativity and culture, and cements its place on the modern art map.”

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