After two years of being closed to the public, the New Museum in NYC recently reopened its doors and publicly debuted its improved and enlarged architecture.

The $82 million project was designed by Rem Koolhaas, the OMA founder, and partner Shohei Shigematsu. It affixed a glassy jewel to the original building, doubling the footprint to 119,700 square feet.

The New Museum’s Expansion and Exhibit

At a media preview this week, Shigematsu compared the alignment of the two buildings – one he called more “vertical and introverted”, the other “more horizontal and extroverted” – to the search for a romantic partner.

“You know how difficult it is to find a perfect pair,” he said, according to The Guardian. “Very difficult.”

To commemorate that union, Harlem-born artist Tschabalala Self created a site-specific sculpture for the museum titled Art Lovers. The work features two lovers embracing, which is meant to represent the happy union between the New Museum’s original building and the new expansion.

The seven-story addition includes three levels of gallery space that connect with existing floors, allowing the museum to remain open during exhibition turnover. The area where the buildings intersect includes an atrium staircase and a flax-based textile resembling an animal pelt, which is the first museum project in the US by Klára Hosnedlová, a Czech artist. A sculpture commission by Sarah Lucas will soon open in the museum’s new outdoor plaza.

The museum reopened with an exhibition titled New Humans: Memories of the Future, which includes a 732-object survey with art, artifacts, and visual culture. The exhibition blends art and technological wizardry.

“Few museums take on thematic shows of this magnitude,” Phillips said. “It takes a keen curatorial vision and a lot of research. I think we’re on the threshold of a seriously new age. I think it’s more dramatic than the Industrial Revolution was, and we’re just at the dawn of it. We’re unprepared. We don’t know what’s coming, but it’s coming and fast.”