The Museum of Modern Art has officially filed its $1.6 million plan to demolish the former home of the American Folk Art Museum to expand its midtown campus.  The announcement comes almost a year after the Museum announced its initial plans to raze the building, after purchasing the building in 2011 for $31.2 million. (more…)

The finalized plans for the expanded Museum of Modern Art campus have been announced, following a lengthy evaluation process, and the final decision by the organization has been unable to reconcile the preservation of the former American Folk Art Museum building with its new plans.  The new space, which will include a retractable glass wall, new gallery space and the opening of its entire first floor free to the public (including the sculpture garden), requires the destruction of the much-loved space, and goes against protests from a number of premier architects.  “It’s not for lack of trying that we find ourselves at the same pass,” said Elizabeth Diller, a principal at the firm Diller Scofidio & Renfro, which evaluated the new plans. “We can’t find a way to save the building.” (more…)

An Alphabet City apartment building slated for demolition has become the site for a number of murals and installations.  The building will be torn down in late January, but the owner has, in the meantime, opened the space up for artists to create their own murals and sculptures inside the space.   (more…)

Richard Serra’s Shift, a series of zigzagging wall structures built along the changing elevations of the field it moves through, has been designated as a cultural heritage site in North Toronto.  Voted through by the township council of King City, Ontario, the work was the subject of fierce and ongoing debate, finally pushed through by a group of concerned citizens called “Friends of Shift.”  “It is especially gratifying that it was the result of the initiative of a group of private citizens who care about art.”  Mr. Serra commented. (more…)

In the wake of the Museum of Modern Art’s decision to demolish the former home of the American Museum of Folk Arts, The New York Times has published an exhaustive survey of MoMA’s expansion over its 100-plus year history.  As the article shows, the museum has a long reputation of demolishing surrounding buildings, including the destruction of a former Rockefeller home, and the George Blumenthal mansion, both of which would be considered landmarks by today’s standard. (more…)

A number of prominent architects have called on the Museum of Modern Art to reconsider its decision to demolish its recent acquisition, the former home of the American Folk Art Museum.  In an open letter to the museum, Richard Meier, Thom Mayne, Steven Holl, Hugh Hardy and Robert A.M. Stern, among others, called for the Museum to reconsider razing the building, which it purchased in 2011.  “The Museum of Modern Art—the first museum with a permanent curatorial department of architecture and design—should provide more information about why it considers it necessary to tear down this significant work of contemporary architecture,” the letter says.  “The public has a substantial and legitimate interest in this decision, and the Museum of Modern Art has not yet offered a compelling justification for the cultural and environmental waste of destroying this much-admired, highly distinctive twelve-year-old building.” (more…)

The former home of the American Folk Art Museum, constructed just 12 years ago, will be demolished to facilitate an expansion by the Museum of Modern Art.  MoMA had purchased the building several years ago as the Folk Art Museum tried to pay off debts from an expansion, and plans to erect a new building to complete its proposed five-building campus expansion.  “We have a lot of art that we own that we would like to show,” said real estate developer and museum chairman Jerry I. Speyer “When we built what exists today we didn’t get as much exhibition space as we really need.” (more…)

The first concrete murals done by Pablo Picasso are in danger of destruction following severe damages to the buildings that house them.  The two buildings were severely damaged in the terrorist attacks of July 2011 in the Norwegian city of Oslo, and government employees have voiced concerns that they may require demolition.  “If the buildings were demolished and the murals integrated into new ones or brought to another site, they would no longer be the works Picasso intended,” says Jørn Holme, the head of the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage. (more…)