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Read the press release here.

Whitney Museum Unveils New Logo Before Meatpacking District Relaunch

 The new zig-zag logo is intended to express the dynamic nature of the museum.
New Whitney Museum Logo
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MANHATTAN — The Whitney Museum of American Art is moving to the Meatpacking District with distinctly Downtown new branding.

The Madison Avenue museum recently unveiled a new logo that features a simple line drawing of a "W," which is intended to be bold yet minimalist.

Quietly released in late May with the posting of a wordless YouTube video, the zig-zag is intended to "embrace the spirit of the Museum while serving as a visual ambassador for our new building," according to a statement on the museum's website.

"This dynamic identity, which the designers refer to as the 'responsive ‘W'' … illustrates the museum’s ever-changing nature," the statement said.

Whitney staff and the Amsterdam-based graphic design firm Experimental Jetset spent two years working on the design, which is meant to represent a pulse or heartbeat.

"The zig-zag [is] a metaphor for a non-simplistic, more complicated and thus more interesting history of art. And as it happens, the zig-zag also resembles a capital W," Experimental Jetset explains on its website.

The 200,000-square-foot museum site located at Washington and Gansevoort streets hit its full height of nine stories in December. It's scheduled to open in 2015.