Recently, the Metropolitan Museum of art in New York announced that a new modern and contemporary art area will be designed by Mexican architect Frida Escobedo. Escobedo, 42, once designed the 2018 London Serpentine Gallery Summer Pavilion and was the youngest architect in the history of the project at that time. The project will cost $500 million, including 80000 square feet of exhibition hall and public space, giving the museum the opportunity to tell a richer story of modern and contemporary art than in the past.

As early as 2014, the Metropolitan Museum of New York had launched a plan to establish a modern and Contemporary Art District, which was shelved due to financial problems. Last November, the museum announced that Tang LiuQian, a Chinese American financier and long-term director of the Metropolitan Museum, and his wife, archaeologist and art historian Xu Xinmei donated a huge amount of US $125 million to the museum. Thanks to the largest capital donation in history, the modern and contemporary art district plan can be restarted, and the art district will also be named after them for at least 50 years.

Tang LiuQian and Xu Xinmei

The new project will cost $500 million. “This is a very important project,” responded Max hollein, curator of the Metropolitan Museum. “The collection will continue to grow and become more prominent than other divisions.” For the museum’s appointment to Escobedo, hollein added, “she speaks loudly in the architectural narrative and has created many contemporary buildings rooted in modern standards.”

Frida Escobedo

For such a large project, many people were surprised to appoint 42 year old Escobedo to design. Previously, her design was mainly temporary structure, which was not a household name. But she admitted that she was not afraid of the task and was excited.

“I like challenges,” Escobedo said in a telephone interview with the New York Times in his hometown of Mexico. “Designing exhibition halls for such an important museum as the Metropolitan Museum is one of the dreams of every architect.”

Escobedo said it was too early to talk about her design concept, but “it is important to connect it with the rest of the museum, Central Park and even the whole city, and show the cultural diversity of New York.”

The metropolis’s appointment of Escobedo was not so clear from the beginning. Previously, they considered four other architectural firms: Ensamble studio, 2021 Pritzker award winner lacaton & vassal, so – IL architectural firm and David Chipperfield architects, of which the initial design price of Chipperfield reached US $800 million. In a tweet that was subsequently deleted, chipfield wrote that he “regretted ending his seven-year relationship with metropolis” and congratulated Escobedo on “everything going well” in the project.

Escobedo was born in Mexico to doctors and demographers. She studied at Ibero American University in Mexico and later went to Harvard University for further study. At present, the cultural circles are more and more sensitive to the issue of equality, and the choice of Escobedo seems to represent the importance of women of color. But Daniel h. Weiss, chairman and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum, pointed out that this has nothing to do with the museum’s decision. “It’s good that Escobedo can bring diversity,” he said. “But it’s not within the criteria of choice.”

Wes added that Escobedo is the right person to design “a landmark building that can illustrate our contemporary art”, and he expects the whole project to be completed in about seven years.

In 2006, Escobedo established her own architectural firm in Mexico City. The metropolitan modern and Contemporary Art District will become her largest cultural project so far, which is at a completely different level from previous projects. Previously, Escobedo’s works included temporary pavilions and structures designed for the Lisbon architecture triennial, the Chicago Architecture Biennale, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

2018 London Serpentine Gallery Summer Pavilion

In London, Escobedo’s snake Gallery Summer Pavilion is a semi enclosed courtyard with a triangular pool, lattice walls made of gray concrete roof tiles, and a curved mirror roof.

Other major works of Escobedo include the expansion project of casqueros Gallery in cuenava, Mexico, in 2012. She transformed the home and studio of the late mural artist David Alfaro Siqueiros into a public museum. In 2008, she designed the renovation of the hotel Boca Chica in Mexico; In 2010, a ground-based device was designed for the Museo experimental El eco. In addition to the construction time, Escobedo is also a teacher. He has taught at Columbia University, Harvard University and Rice University, and is now teaching at Yale University.

West kellos Gallery

At present, Escobedo is cooperating with Handel architecture, headquartered in New York, on the ray Harlem project, a joint venture with the National Black Theater, which will include residential, retail and performance space in the future.

The metropolitan modern and Contemporary Art District will create 80000 square feet of exhibition hall and public space, giving the museum the opportunity to tell a richer story of modern and contemporary art than in the past. In addition, the area named after Tang LiuQian will also include photography, sketch and printmaking.

Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hollein said that the new area will not provide “a linear road”, but “a more open architectural structure”, and the exhibition hall will have different heights, sizes and lighting. Now, when pavilions such as the Museum of modern art in New York begin to rethink the presentation of art and accommodate multiple perspectives and different styles, this new area of the metropolis will also seek an expanded narrative. “Our