#FacadeFridays – The Met Breuer has officially closed for good, with the collection moving back to the Metropolitan Museum's Fifth Avenue location in anticipation of reopening in August. The building will now house the Frick Collection, while the institution renovates its gilded Fifth Ave mansion. While housing the Met's contemporary art collection in Marcel Breuer's modernist masterpiece, the museum was a money loser and by transitioning the last three years of their lease to the Frick, the Met will save an estimated $45 million. The sublease to the Frick will end in 2023, when the owner of the landmark, the Whitney, will decide its fate. Marcel Breuer's Whitney Museum opened in 1966, giving the contemporary art museum its own modern identity. Wrapped in concrete and faced in 1,500 granite slabs each weighing 500 to 600 pounds, the building stands out from the surrounding limestone, brick and brownstone townhouses, and apartment buildings. Resembling an upside-down ziggurat, the front of the structure is surrounded by a moat looking trench, occupied by a sunken sculpture court, creating a gap between the sidewalk and the entrance, only bridged by a concrete span connecting Madison Avenue to the lobby. It was said that #Breuer didn’t want any windows at all for his bunker-like museum, settling for artificial lighting, which would have provided a better display for the artwork inside. For the interiors, Breuer used a vast array of materials including terrazzo, board-formed and bush-hammered concrete, bluestone for the floors, walnut parquet, and suspended precast #concrete coffers for the ceiling. The museum’s four floors offer 26,7000 square-feet of gallery space, 21,500 square feet of storage, a restaurant, and a 120 person film gallery. In 2016, the Whitney Museum moved into their new Renzo Piano-designed home on Gansevoort Street, leaving the Madison Avenue building to the Metropolitan Museum of Art who renamed it The #MetBreuer after the #brutalist architect. Before the Met moved in, the building underwent a $600 million renovation led by architects Beyer Blinder Belle. For more on the Met Breuer visit #BrutalNYC #linkinbio (at The Met Breuer) https://www.instagram.com/p/CB50BVbnQGj/?igshid=1gaby9fiqmjez
