Skyscraper Museum
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The Skyscraper Museum is an architecture museum in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, founded in 1996.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The museum focuses on high-rise buildings as "products of technology, objects of design, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence." The Skyscraper Museum also celebrates the architectural heritage of New York and the forces and people who created New York's skyline.<ref name="Hill"/> Before moving to the current and permanent location in Battery Park City in 2004, the museum was a nomadic institution, holding pop-up exhibitions in four temporary donated spaces around Lower Manhattan since 1996.
The Skyscraper Museum was founded and is directed by Carol Willis, a professor of architectural history and urban studies at Columbia University.<ref name="iovine"/> It includes two exhibition spaces for both permanent and temporary exhibitions, a bookstore, and a mezzanine with its office, situated above the bookstore. The museum can be reached by a ramp starting in the basement.<ref name="Hill">Template:Cite book</ref>
Move after September 11, 2001
The original site of the museum was located very close to the World Trade Center. After the September 11 attacks, the museum was forced to close temporarily as its space was commandeered as an emergency information center.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In March 2004, the museum reopened in its new permanent home at 39 Battery Place in the neighborhood of Battery Park City at the southern tip of Manhattan.<ref name="iovine"/> It was the first museum to open in Lower Manhattan after the September 11 attacks. The museum occupies an area of Template:Convert on the ground-floor of a mixed-use building, that was donated by the developer.<ref name="Hill"/> The new site was designed by Roger Duffy of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, working pro bono.<ref name="iovine">Template:Cite news</ref> The architect tried to amplify the indoor height of the museum, which is Template:Convert. This was arranged by using polished covers of stainless steel on the floors and ceilings, giving the illusion of an infinite vertical space.<ref name="Hill"/>
Selected exhibitions
On September 6, 2006, the museum opened an exhibit on the construction of the World Trade Center and the complex's subsequent history. The exhibit includes the original architectural/engineering model of the World Trade Center.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
On June 24, 2009, the museum opened China Prophecy: Shanghai, a multi-media exhibition that examines Shanghai's evolving identity as a skyscraper metropolis. Featuring models of the major iconic structures, including Jin Mao, Tomorrow Square, Shanghai World Financial Center, and the new super-tall Shanghai Tower, as well as computer animations, film, drawings, and historic and contemporary photography of the city, the exhibition combines an in-depth look at the new generation of towers with an overview of the sweeping transformation of the city's traditional low-rise landscape into a city of towers.
In 2011, the Skyscraper Museum opened a new exhibit called "Supertall!" dedicated to the tallest buildings in the world, those that stand at least Template:Convert, the height of the Empire State Building. The exhibit features qualifying buildings built since 2001 to those that will be built by 2016 as a commemoration of and to demonstrate the irony of the recent popularity of the skyscraper in many countries, despite sentiment that after the September 11 attacks there would be no more desire to live or work in or to build skyscrapers.<ref name="wsjaugust">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Besides in-house exhibitions, the museum also sponsors external shows and programs at various locations in the city. Additionally, the museum offers a unique virtual gallery through its website, which is an advanced 3-D archive of Manhattan skyscrapers.
See also
Further reading
- Filler, Martin (April 2015). New York: Conspicuous Construction. A discussion of Sky High and the Logic of Luxury – an exhibition at the Skyscraper Museum, New York City, October 2013 – June 2014. The New York Review of Books
References
External links
- Official website
- Online Virtual gallery Template:Webarchive
- Photos from the Shanghai exhibition opening
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