A “Bento Box For Art”

Herbert Muschamp says the New Museum of Contemporary Art’s planned building for the Bowery, is a “seven-story bento box for art.” “Like every substantial building that has gone up in Manhattan in the past decade, Saana’s design demonstrates the fecundity that occurs when the idea of context is distinguished from mere adjacency. Add to, rather than fit in with: this is the crux of the distinction. When a building is dedicated to contemporaneity, as the New Museum will be, the design should add to the present.”