The New-York Historical Society (NYHS) announced plans for a $140m expansion of its building on Central Park West to accommodate additional programming, underground library storage and a home for a planned American LGBTQ+ Museum.
The expansion, paid for in part by a $35 million grant from New York’s cultural affairs office, will add more than 70,000 square feet of additional space for the Historical Society and the newly created American LGBTQ+ Museum, which will take up the entire fourth floor of a planned five-story addition. The addition will rise on an adjacent lot on West 76th Street that the institution acquired in 1937, and completion is projected in 2024.
The Historical Society’s classrooms will also get significantly more space to house an education center for the Academy for American Democracy education initiative, which offers resources to 30,000 public school students throughout the city.
New galleries will also serve graduate students in the New-York Historical Society’s Master of Arts in Museum Studies program, which aims to diversify the city’s cultural workforce.
“We look forward to bringing a dynamic new museum to life within this cherished, deeply respected and growing New York City landmark,” Richard Burns, the board chairman of the fledgling museum, said in a statement. He said that planners were committed to “building a thoughtful, welcoming, queer and inclusive experience” for visitors.
The board chair of the forthcoming American LGBTQ+ Museum, Richard Burns, told that the project has been in the works since 2017, when a group of local activists came up with the idea. In 2018 the nascent board of directors began raising money and settled on a museum charter in 2019.
In an email to Artnet News, the Leslie-Lohman Museum said “since 1969, just weeks before the Stonewall uprising, Leslie-Lohman has been exhibiting and preserving LGBTQ+ art and championing the visions of queer artists, while building a unique collection of over 30,000 artworks. It’s exciting to welcome new initiatives and institutions centering queer histories and cultures.”
The expansion will be helmed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects and move the museums into a 10,000-square-foot lot that Historical Society trustees purchased in 1937. The expansion is planned as a “phased project,” with the first beginning in summer 2022. Museum officials hope to have the work done by 2024.
