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Whitney Museum to Build New Location in Meatpacking District

By DNAinfo Staff on May 26, 2010 10:29am  | Updated on May 26, 2010 10:51am

An artist's rendition for the Whitney Museum of American Art in the Meatpacking District.
An artist's rendition for the Whitney Museum of American Art in the Meatpacking District.
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Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Cooper, Robertson & Partners

By Olivia Scheck

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MANHATTAN — The Whitney Museum of American Art will soon break ground on a new Meatpacking District location after 25 years of failed attempts at expansion, the New York Times reported.

The board agreed on the plan for a downtown Whitney Tuesday afternoon, in a unanimous vote held at the Standard Hotel, blocks from 820 Washington St. where the museum is to be built, the Times said.

“A year from now we will be breaking ground,” Whitney director Adam D. Weinberg confirmed for the paper.

The six story building near the Gansevoort Street entrance of the High Line park will include 50,000 square feet of indoor gallery space, 13,000 square feet of rooftop space for exhibitions, a research library, classrooms and an indoor/outdoor performance space, the Times said.

Designed by architect Renzo Piano, it will be the largest column-free art space in the city when it opens in 2015, the paper noted.

Though the museum has already raised $372 million for the new building, they will need an estimated $308 million in additional funds, the Times said.

While they expect to earn $100 million from the sale of a group of brownstones, which are adjacent to the museum's original location, the Whitney might need to take on a partner to afford the expansion, the Times noted.

To this end, the museum is in talks with the Metropolitan Museum of Art to temporarily house their modern and contemporary collections in the Whitney's uptown space while the Met renovates those galleries, according to the Times.

The extra square footage provided by the downtown addition will provide much needed gallery space for the Whitney's 18,000 piece collection. In the current space there is only enough room to display 150 works, according to the Times.

As a result, many of the larger pieces have never been displayed, the paper noted.