The Lila Acheson Wallace Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the museum's modern and contemporary collection has lived, is now a construction site. Site preparation began in May 2026. The Met formally broke ground on September 15, and the museum says major construction starts this fall. The Cantor Roof Garden above it last opened to the public on October 19, 2025, as Gothamist reported that day. Neither space is expected back before 2030.
So for the next four years, the Upper East Side's biggest museum has no permanent home for twentieth-century art. The art itself is still on view, though. This fall it hangs in temporary exhibitions inside The Met and in neighboring museums along Fifth Avenue, and every one of those shows has a closing date. Modern art on Museum Mile used to be a fixed collection you could see on any visit. For now it runs on a calendar, and the calendar is tighter than it looks.
What Closed, And What Replaces It
The project is the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing for Modern and Contemporary Art. It is designed by Frida Escobedo, the first woman to design a new wing in The Met's 156-year history, with Beyer Blinder Belle as executive architect. The rebuilt wing will be five stories and 126,000 square feet, built within the existing footprint and no taller than the original 1880 wing. The museum says it will add nearly 50 percent more gallery space. The new design also includes an expanded Cantor Roof Garden on the fourth floor.
The Met's Tang Wing page answers the obvious question directly:
The Modern and Contemporary Art galleries are expected to reopen in 2030. While the Tang Wing is under construction, visitors can continue to experience highlights of the modern and contemporary art collection throughout the Museum.
In practice, that has meant one long-running installation and a series of special exhibitions with end dates.
Inside The Met, Modern Art Now Comes With End Dates
The one long-term option is The Face of Life: Modern Portraits at The Met, which runs through 2029. Everything else in this fall's modern and contemporary program closes within months.
The main event is Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous, which opened October 4 and runs through January 31, 2027. The Met calls it its first New York presentation devoted to either artist in more than 20 years. Before the wing closed, a visitor might have expected to find a Pollock in the permanent galleries at any time. Now the museum's biggest Abstract Expressionist moment is a single exhibition with a four-month run.
Three smaller projects run alongside it:
- There Are No Words: Si Lewen's Parade, October 1 through January 5, 2027
- David Hartt: Peripheries, September 25 through February 7, 2027, in the American Wing's Gallery 735
- The Genesis Facade Commission: Liu Wei, Speculation, on the Fifth Avenue facade from September 17 through June 8, 2027
Hartt's placement shows how the program is working now. Contemporary work that once had a dedicated wing is appearing in other departments' galleries, and the Liu Wei commission is installed on the building's exterior. Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany opens in the same season, October 22 through February 7, 2027. Costume Art stays open through January 10, 2027.
Repeat visits are easier than they look. New York State residents can still pay what they wish, with a one-cent minimum, and buying that ticket online requires a New York State billing address.
Up Fifth Avenue, The Same Century Is On View
The Met is not the only place on the Mile showing this period this fall. The museums farther north are showing the same century in their own ways, on their own schedules.
At the Guggenheim, Guggenheim Pop has been up since June 5 and closes January 10, 2027. Taryn Simon's Rotunda exhibition opened September 18 and runs through March 14, 2027, according to the museum's 2026 schedule announcement. Between Pop at the Guggenheim and Abstract Expressionism at The Met, two consecutive chapters of postwar American art are on view a short walk apart until early January.
The early part of the century is downtown on the Mile, and it comes with a deadline. At the Jewish Museum, Modernity and Opulence: Women of the Wiener Werkstätte has been on view since July 17 and closes November 15. The museum's fall program continues after that. Sacred Splendor: Jewish Ritual Art and Christian Treasures from St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague runs through February 7, 2027, as do the Focus Gallery shows by Hannah Altman and Afruz Amighi. Oded Halahmy: Models in Wood closes January 3.
That November 15 closing matters because of what happens three days earlier, a few blocks south.
November 12 Is The Hinge Of The Season
Two openings land on the same Thursday.
Neue Galerie New York closed over the summer for a multi-phase construction project to reinforce its historic building. All of its galleries reopen November 12. The museum is devoted to early twentieth-century German and Austrian art and design. It was founded by art dealer Serge Sabarsky and philanthropist Ronald S. Lauder and opened in 2001. It reopens with the 25th Anniversary Exhibition: Masterworks from the Neue Galerie, on view November 12 through January 11, 2027.
From November 12 to November 15, then, the Neue Galerie's Austrian and German holdings and the Jewish Museum's Wiener Werkstätte show are open at the same time. It is the only stretch this season when that pairing is possible, and it lasts four days.
The Neue Galerie also returns on a new schedule. Starting November 12, the galleries are open Monday and Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with last entry at 5:30, and closed Tuesday. General admission is $28, $18 for seniors, and $15 for students, educators, and visitors with disabilities. Free First Fridays run from 5 to 8 p.m. Café Sabarsky, the bookstore, and the design shop have already gone back to regular hours, so the café is open weeks before the galleries.
The same day, the Frick Collection opens Kent Monkman: Officer and Laughing Girl, running through February 22, 2027. Monkman's new paintings respond to Officer and Laughing Girl, painted around 1657 and one of the Frick's three Vermeers. They look at how that painting and other art of its time showed the effects of global trade and colonization. Like Hartt in the American Wing, this is contemporary work hung against an older collection, which is the arrangement the whole Mile is relying on while The Met builds.
The Frick's other fall show opens first. Siena: The Art of Bronze, 1450–1500 runs October 15 through January 18, 2027. It brings together some forty works, many never exhibited outside Tuscany, and the Frick describes it as the first exhibition to focus on Siena as a center of Renaissance bronze sculpture.
Farther north, the Museum of the City of New York has a busy November too. Halumii Ktapihna: Lenape Legacies and Futures opened September 25. Gingerbread NYC: The Great Borough Bake-Off opens to the public November 6, and The Photography Triennial: After Dark follows November 20, according to the museum's 2026 schedule.
The January Closings
The bigger squeeze comes after the holidays. Many of the fall shows that put modern art back on the Mile close within about four weeks of each other:
- January 3: Oded Halahmy: Models in Wood, Jewish Museum
- January 5: There Are No Words: Si Lewen's Parade, The Met
- January 10: Guggenheim Pop, Guggenheim, and Costume Art, The Met
- January 11: 25th Anniversary Exhibition, Neue Galerie
- January 18: Siena: The Art of Bronze, the Frick
- January 31: Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous, The Met
Some shows run longer. David Hartt: Peripheries, Tiffany's drawings, and the Jewish Museum's Prague exhibition all stay through February 7. Monkman stays through February 22, and The Met's Orientalism: Between Fact and Fantasy through February 28. Taryn Simon's Rotunda stays through March 14. New shows also open in December: Ruth Patir: (M)otherland at the Jewish Museum on December 18, and The Met's Across Wine-Dark Seas: Art and Identity beyond Ancient Greece on December 20.
Under the Tang Wing timeline, this kind of turnover is now normal on the Mile. The modern collection that sat in one wing will reach the public through rotating shows like these until 2030. That is the date The Met gives for both the new wing and the reopened roof garden. For this season, the dates to plan around are November 12 to 15 and the four weeks before January 31.
Changes on Museum Mile shape the blocks around it, and a construction timeline that runs to 2030 is one of many details that come up when an Upper East Side owner thinks about a building's setting over the long term. If you would like to talk through how The Met's construction years, or other changes along Fifth Avenue, affect your plans, Hilary James is glad to help. Request a confidential consultation.
