Met announces Mexican as 1st female architect for wing

The exterior of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Photo: AP

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art announced on March 14 that a Mexican architect has been chosen as the first woman to design a wing at The Met, as the museum is known.

The Met said in a statement that Mexican architect Frida Escobedo has been selected to design the renovation of The Met’s modern and contemporary galleries, known as the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing.

The newly re-designed wing at the iconic Manhattan museum will hold modern and contemporary art, as well as photographs, drawings and prints.

The Met has been seeking to revamp the current modern and contemporary galleries for more than a decade. The project will create 80,000sq ft (7,432sq m) of galleries and public space at an estimated cost of about US$500mil (RM2.1bil).

The museum said "through flexible gallery spaces, the wing will emphasise the interconnectedness of space and time and suggest a non-chronological narrative”.

The museum quoted Escobedo as saying "The Met is one of the most relevant sites for culture on a global scale, and it is an honour to be selected for this historic architectural reimagining”.

"The Tang Wing presents an opportunity to give new life to the Museum’s art from the 20th and 21st century; to celebrate the dynamics we can find within art of different times, geographies and ideologies,” Escobedo wrote.

Escobedo founded a Mexico City architectural group under her own name in 2006. She achieved widespread recognition after she was chosen to design the annual Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens.

But she is best known among Mexicans for overseeing the renovation of the mid-century modern Hotel Boca Chica in the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco. – AP