Brooklyn Museum announced today that Peterson Rich Office (PRO) will design new permanent galleries in the East Wing’s third floor for the Arts of Africa collection. Beyer Blinder Belle will serve as historic preservation consultant.
“This is more than a new collection gallery—it’s a bold reframing of how African art is understood and celebrated in American museums,” Anne Pasternak, Brooklyn Museum’s Shelby White and Leon Levy director, shared in a statement.
The galleries PRO will renovate were designed by McKim, Mead & White, and cumulatively measure 6,400 square feet. They have varying ceiling heights, ranging from 23 to 25 feet, and sit adjacent to Brooklyn Museum’s landmark Beaux-Arts court.
PRO’s design strategy is aimed at uniting the rooms “into a cohesive new gallery experience,” Brooklyn Museum said in a statement.
New infrastructure will be exposed in order to emphasize the museum’s historical layers. (PRO/Courtesy Brooklyn Museum)
Renderings show historical plaster ceilings, walls, and moldings—painted off-white—juxtaposed with modern lighting and climate systems, lacquered in a dark red hue.
Metal finishes will have a “rich accent color” to clearly establish what’s old and new. The new infrastructure will be exposed and celebrated in order to emphasize the museum’s historical layers.
The Arts of Africa gallery’s inaugural exhibition will be curated by Ernestine Mifetu-White and Annissa Malvoisin, and host some three hundred works sourced from antiquity to the present.
The gallery collection comprises over 4,500 objects. (PRO/Courtesy Brooklyn Museum)
Pasternak elaborated, “this renovation is a major step in our larger vision to revitalize the entire [Brooklyn] Museum, creating spaces that will allow us to continue to entice and engage a breadth of audiences with distinctive art experiences.”
“Ultimately,” Pasternak added, “this transformation strengthens our role as a civic and cultural anchor in Brooklyn—deepening our relationship with our community and expanding what a museum can be for the public we serve.”
The commission denotes the latest major museum project for PRO, after a new special exhibitions gallery at the Met, MoMA Design Store in Soho, Pruzan Art Center at Wesleyan University, Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works, and the Shepherd in Detroit.
This is also the third instance in which PRO will negotiate a McKim, Mead & White building. McKim, Mead & White completed several major expansions at the Met between 1907 and 1926, and the Pruzan Art Center was built to connect two disparate wings designed by the historic firm.
Renovation work at Brooklyn Museum will begin summer 2026 and the new galleries should open fall 2027.