{"id":574700,"date":"2026-04-09T22:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/574700\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T22:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:06:11","slug":"was-the-new-museums-82-million-extension-a-rush-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/574700\/","title":{"rendered":"Was the New Museum\u2019s $82 Million Extension a Rush Job?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New Museum has a packing-tape problem. In late March, its $82 million, shardlike addition, designed by Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, finally opened to the public. Many critics, including our own<\/a>, praised the new building. (\u201cA shot of rejuvenating playfulness<\/a>\u201d and \u201cbrilliantly subtle<\/a>,\u201d with familiar OMA flourishes<\/a> like its triangular rooftop cutouts.) Others saw a rush job. \u201cIt is sleek, slick, glossy, try-hard, angular, studiously aloof, and photogenic (but only if you don\u2019t look too closely),\u201d Christopher Hawthorne wrote<\/a> in his Punch List newsletter, noting strips of packing tape on the sleek metal staircase and \u201cworkers\u2019 fingerprints and Pollockian splatters of black paint captured for what may be eternity beneath sheets of glass.\u201d Architects piled on too. \u201cIf your grand staircase is the most public face of the building, then why is it covered in clear packing tape on opening night?\u201d one said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Maybe scrutiny was to be expected. The expansion along the Bowery was OMA\u2019s first major public commission<\/a> in the city, and the firm\u2019s reputation precedes it. Then there were the delays: It was supposed to debut<\/a> in 2022, but the pandemic meant construction only began that year. And for fairly mysterious reasons, last year\u2019s planned reopening was pushed back. The price tag likely didn\u2019t help either. But is a little stray tape or a clumsily set banister panel really that big a deal? According to at least one museum director I talked to, it is a bit of egg on the face for the New Museum. Had it been their institution, says this director, who has overseen multimillion-dollar renovations in New York and elsewhere, they would have been \u201ca much more proactive client\u201d to ensure everything at least looked right by the opening. \u201cIn my experience, you don\u2019t open with apologies that this isn\u2019t done yet,\u201d this director tells me. \u201cIf we had to wait for the manufacturer of something, you still dressed it so that it was unnoticeable.\u201d (The New Museum did, in fact, open with apologies. \u201cIf you see some blue tape around, that\u2019s because that\u2019s what exhibitions are made of,\u201d artistic director Massimiliano Gioni apparently told attendees<\/a> at the press preview. \u201cWe were working very late. I hope you can\u2019t really tell. If you do tell, please forgive us.\u201d)<\/p>\n

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\n From left: Photo: Sukjong HongPhoto: Sukjong Hong\n <\/p>\n

\n From top: Photo: Sukjong HongPhoto: Sukjong Hong\n <\/p>\n

When I started talking to people on the project, multiple subcontractors pointed fingers at Sciame Construction, the firm hired to build OMA\u2019s vision. \u201cSciame has carved out this niche in general contracting that they are the art contractor,\u201d one construction worker tells me. The problem, this person says, was that the company was juggling too many projects alongside the New Museum \u2014 among them, a major renovation for the Frick<\/a> and building a completely new Studio Museum<\/a> in Harlem. As this subcontractor put it, \u201cThey put the B-team on the New Museum and sent the A-team to the Studio Museum.\u201d (Per Sciame, the firm \u201croutinely completes numerous best-in-class projects across many building sectors concurrently, including many NYC cultural projects.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Sciame\u2019s scheduling and management issues also led to job delays and a chaotic worksite, according to at least three subcontractors I spoke with. There was a March 21 deadline, and people were racing to finish. \u201cThe carpentry trade would put up walls and then you\u2019d have to take down the wall or try to work around it,\u201d one of these workers tells me. \u201cPretty much all these trades were in each other\u2019s way.\u201d In the days leading up to the opening, another worker says, \u201cthey were still doing pretty heavy work adjacent to or on top of finished surfaces,\u201d and adds that they saw freshly poured concrete floors damaged by dropped tools and heavy equipment that had been dragged across the space: \u201cEverybody was like, \u2018This is one of the worst jobs I\u2019ve ever been on.\u2019\u201d (Per Sciame,\u00a0\u201cNYC construction sites can be characterized by some as \u2018organized chaos.\u2019\u201d But, the firm adds, \u201cAs with all our projects, the building will be fully turned over with all finishes in place as designed and envisioned by the design professionals.\u201d)<\/p>\n

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\n From left: Photo: Sukjong HongPhoto: Sukjong Hong\n <\/p>\n

\n From top: Photo: Sukjong HongPhoto: Sukjong Hong\n <\/p>\n

This same worker also tells me Sciame failed to communicate the profile of the job \u2014\u00a0or, notably, OMA\u2019s profile \u2014\u00a0and the fact that this would likely be one of the most heavily watched openings in the city. \u201cIt didn\u2019t feel like that, the way they were running the job and rushing things,\u201d this person says. (Sciame calls this claim \u201cwholly inaccurate\u201d and says, \u201cThe significance of the New Museum expansion was never in question at all levels of the project and across the Sciame organization.\u201d) But there were other issues beyond Sciame\u2019s control, per these tradesmen \u2014\u00a0the typical red tape that comes with building in the city.<\/p>\n

Other people who worked on the project say the New Museum expansion was pretty standard \u2014 hectic, maybe, but nothing out of the ordinary. \u201cThis rolled out as much as any job would roll out,\u201d a different subcontractor says. \u201cEvery job, at the end, there\u2019s a rush.\u201d And most projects have what\u2019s called a punch list to address cosmetic or other lingering issues after opening. (To that end, Sciame tells me, \u201cAs with any project of this scale, punch-list work continues through final completion, and as always, we fully stand behind our work.\u201d) An architect who wasn\u2019t involved in the New Museum expansion didn\u2019t seem all that concerned about any of the issues people have called out either. \u201cIn my work, major red flags would be accessibility, ADA compliance, leaks in the roof or envelope,\u201d this architect says. \u201cNone of these rise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Could this mini-mess have been avoided by further delaying the opening? Maybe. \u201cThis never would have happened if they allowed more time and had a more thorough punch list,\u201d says the worker who claims to have seen concrete floors being damaged. But that\u2019s a hard call to make on a project that\u2019s already behind schedule, says the museum director: \u201cYou do have to balance between the imperative of opening and the imperative of achieving the full, final execution of all detailing \u2014 and it\u2019s not easy to do the latter.\u201d (Sciame says, \u201cSome conditions observed during press previews reflected work in progress and were not representative of the completed building. Those items have since been addressed.\u201d) In this case, the New Museum\u2019s ultimate calculation might have been accepting one form of bad press over another: Delay yet again and get the art world talking, or open with some rough edges and \u2026 get the art world talking.<\/p>\n

As for the museum\u2019s visitors \u2014\u00a0they might not have noticed anything askew. When I went last week, the place was busy an hour before closing with dozens of people wandering through the galleries and atrium. Rather than looking down at misaligned seams in the staircase, they were looking up at Kl\u00e1ra Hosnedlov\u00e1\u2019s peltlike hanging installation. Or at least most of them were. \u201cKind of a poor finish,\u201d I heard one woman say about a gap in the floor.<\/p>\n

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