Costume Art: Conde M. Nast Galleries
The Metropolitan Museum of Art stands as a living testament to architectural accumulation—twenty-one different expansions and renovations have created a rich collage of construction types, materials, and design philosophies.
Despite this heterogeneous composition, the Museum maintains its coherence through a masterful orchestration of enfilades—long sightlines that form interior urban corridors, connecting disparate spaces and diverse art collections into a unified spatial experience. Peterson Rich Office has designed the new Condé M. Nast Galleries by building upon this organizing principle. Occupying nearly 12,000 square feet across five sequential rooms within a former exterior courtyard immediately adjacent to the landmark Great Hall, the galleries are designed to accommodate diverse rotating exhibitions, in particular The Costume Institute’s annual spring show—one of the Museum’s most visited presentations. The enclosing walls of the galleries conceal what were previously the exterior facades of historic Met buildings from the 1880s and 1890s. This unique condition creates an extraordinary opportunity to expose and celebrate layers of the Museum’s architectural history while establishing a distinctly contemporary gallery environment. PRO approached the project with a deliberate paradox: the space should feel as enduring and integral as The Met building itself, even as it serves content that will rotate annually.
A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME
The spatial sequence begins with the Orientation Gallery, positioned at the corner of Richard Morris Hunt’s original Great Hall building, and concludes with the Finale Gallery, which faces Arthur Lyman Tuckerman’s third Met building from 1894 and Calvert Vaux’s first Met building from 1880. By bracketing the new galleries between these pivotal structures from the Museum’s founding era, the design creates a powerful dialogue spanning The Met’s earliest and most recent architectural chapters. Visitors enter the Orientation Gallery through two 19-foot-tall limestone openings, immediately encountering new walls clad in grey marmorino plaster—a traditional Italian technique that lends the surfaces a timelessness reminiscent of The Met’s Greek and Roman galleries. This space serves as both spatial and aesthetic transition from the historic Great Hall to the contemporary galleries beyond. Embedded in the North and South walls, two pieces of glass casework provide windows into the new space from surrounding parts of the Museum, holding key objects and didactic text that introduce the exhibition while communicating its presence to passersby. An ornate limestone arch, preserved from Richard Morris Hunt’s design, surrounds one of the cases, creating a moment of contrast between old and new. Two massive 8-by-16-foot swinging oak doors—which can be closed or held open depending on programming—serve as a threshold between the Orientation Gallery and the primary exhibition spaces beyond.
LIGHT AND STRUCTURE
The second room, the High Gallery, serves as one of two primary exhibition spaces. Referencing its 21-foot ceilings, this expansive, flexible space occupies the former exterior courtyard and is outfitted to support a wide range of exhibitions. An innovative lighting strategy is distinctly contemporary and defines the character of this room: a series of structural beams along the ceiling carries the gallery’s technical infrastructure while simultaneously uplighting an upper ceiling plane, creating an ambient, even light source that softly evokes the space’s original function as an open exterior courtyard. This carefully calibrated system provides the flexible, high-quality illumination essential for rotating exhibitions, while the heavy beams and columns create a sense of permanence and distinct architectural identity. Four openings connect the High Gallery to the adjacent Low Gallery, the second primary exhibition space. This 4,750-square-foot room is designed for more intimate presentations. Lower ceilings allow for floor-to-ceiling casework and displays of smaller works, creating a different scale of gallery experience that maintains a porous visual relationship to the adjacent High Gallery.
REVEALING HISTORY
The sequence concludes in the Finale Gallery, where an exposed wall of historic brick and granite masonry—remnants of the Museum’s original 1880s and 1890s buildings—stands in deliberate contrast to the contemporary details, lighting, and plaster surfaces that define the main gallery spaces. This architectural revelation serves as a poignant symbol for the gallery’s central tension: the coexistence of historic permanence and constant transformation. Here too, plaster walls and 21-foot ceilings are outfitted with lighting infrastructure to support contemporary exhibitions, but the exposed historic fabric anchors the space in the Museum’s founding era. Through this juxtaposition, visitors experience a tangible dialogue between the Museum’s architectural past and its evolving present, reinforcing the gallery’s role as both vessel for contemporary curatorial practice and celebration of The Met’s layered architectural heritage. A small shop dedicated to supporting special exhibitions sits adjacent to the Finale Gallery. Directly across from here, a new set of wood doors—matching those at the Orientation Gallery—transitions visitors directly into the Museum’s Byzantine galleries, drawing audiences deeper into The Met’s collections through a newly scripted sequence of movements and spaces.
A FRAMEWORK FOR THE FUTURE
By designing the Condé M. Nast Galleries, Peterson Rich Office has created more than a new exhibition venue—we have established an architectural framework that will shape the visitor experience for generations. The galleries deliberately expose historic building components while creating exhibition spaces of clearly contemporary character between them, establishing a visual language of layered time that honors the Museum’s past while serving its future. The Condé M. Nast Galleries embody PRO’s approach to adaptive reuse within historic institutions: working with the essential character of existing architecture rather than against it, revealing rather than concealing layers of history, and creating contemporary spaces that can foster a more complex relationship with history itself. Rather than treating the past as something complete and separate, this architecture suggests history is something we actively engage with, reinterpret, and continue. This encourages a more dynamic and participatory relationship with cultural heritage. Year after year, as exhibitions rotate and evolve, the gallery itself will remain unmistakably at The Met and of The Met—a permanent architectural gesture in service of the Museum’s continual transformation.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art stands as a living testament to architectural accumulation—twenty-one different expansions and renovations have created a rich collage of construction types, materials, and design philosophies.
A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME
The spatial sequence begins with the Orientation Gallery, positioned at the corner of Richard Morris Hunt’s original Great Hall building, and concludes with the Finale Gallery, which faces Arthur Lyman Tuckerman’s third Met building from 1894 and Calvert Vaux’s first Met building from 1880. By bracketing the new galleries between these pivotal structures from the Museum’s founding era, the design creates a powerful dialogue spanning The Met’s earliest and most recent architectural chapters. Visitors enter the Orientation Gallery through two 19-foot-tall limestone openings, immediately encountering new walls clad in grey marmorino plaster—a traditional Italian technique that lends the surfaces a timelessness reminiscent of The Met’s Greek and Roman galleries. This space serves as both spatial and aesthetic transition from the historic Great Hall to the contemporary galleries beyond. Embedded in the North and South walls, two pieces of glass casework provide windows into the new space from surrounding parts of the Museum, holding key objects and didactic text that introduce the exhibition while communicating its presence to passersby. An ornate limestone arch, preserved from Richard Morris Hunt’s design, surrounds one of the cases, creating a moment of contrast between old and new. Two massive 8-by-16-foot swinging oak doors—which can be closed or held open depending on programming—serve as a threshold between the Orientation Gallery and the primary exhibition spaces beyond.
LIGHT AND STRUCTURE
The second room, the High Gallery, serves as one of two primary exhibition spaces. Referencing its 21-foot ceilings, this expansive, flexible space occupies the former exterior courtyard and is outfitted to support a wide range of exhibitions. An innovative lighting strategy is distinctly contemporary and defines the character of this room: a series of structural beams along the ceiling carries the gallery’s technical infrastructure while simultaneously uplighting an upper ceiling plane, creating an ambient, even light source that softly evokes the space’s original function as an open exterior courtyard. This carefully calibrated system provides the flexible, high-quality illumination essential for rotating exhibitions, while the heavy beams and columns create a sense of permanence and distinct architectural identity. Four openings connect the High Gallery to the adjacent Low Gallery, the second primary exhibition space. This 4,750-square-foot room is designed for more intimate presentations. Lower ceilings allow for floor-to-ceiling casework and displays of smaller works, creating a different scale of gallery experience that maintains a porous visual relationship to the adjacent High Gallery.
REVEALING HISTORY
The sequence concludes in the Finale Gallery, where an exposed wall of historic brick and granite masonry—remnants of the Museum’s original 1880s and 1890s buildings—stands in deliberate contrast to the contemporary details, lighting, and plaster surfaces that define the main gallery spaces. This architectural revelation serves as a poignant symbol for the gallery’s central tension: the coexistence of historic permanence and constant transformation. Here too, plaster walls and 21-foot ceilings are outfitted with lighting infrastructure to support contemporary exhibitions, but the exposed historic fabric anchors the space in the Museum’s founding era. Through this juxtaposition, visitors experience a tangible dialogue between the Museum’s architectural past and its evolving present, reinforcing the gallery’s role as both vessel for contemporary curatorial practice and celebration of The Met’s layered architectural heritage. A small shop dedicated to supporting special exhibitions sits adjacent to the Finale Gallery. Directly across from here, a new set of wood doors—matching those at the Orientation Gallery—transitions visitors directly into the Museum’s Byzantine galleries, drawing audiences deeper into The Met’s collections through a newly scripted sequence of movements and spaces.
A FRAMEWORK FOR THE FUTURE
By designing the Condé M. Nast Galleries, Peterson Rich Office has created more than a new exhibition venue—we have established an architectural framework that will shape the visitor experience for generations. The galleries deliberately expose historic building components while creating exhibition spaces of clearly contemporary character between them, establishing a visual language of layered time that honors the Museum’s past while serving its future. The Condé M. Nast Galleries embody PRO’s approach to adaptive reuse within historic institutions: working with the essential character of existing architecture rather than against it, revealing rather than concealing layers of history, and creating contemporary spaces that can foster a more complex relationship with history itself. Rather than treating the past as something complete and separate, this architecture suggests history is something we actively engage with, reinterpret, and continue. This encourages a more dynamic and participatory relationship with cultural heritage. Year after year, as exhibitions rotate and evolve, the gallery itself will remain unmistakably at The Met and of The Met—a permanent architectural gesture in service of the Museum’s continual transformation.
The gallery sequence unfolds as a linear progression beginning at the Orientation Gallery near the Great Hall, moving through the expansive High Gallery and more intimate Low Gallery, and culminating in the Finale Gallery. These spaces are organized as a series of connected rooms with varying scales, ceiling heights, and lighting conditions to support different types of exhibitions while maintaining visual continuity. The layout is anchored by historic architectural elements at both ends, creating a spatial dialogue between the Museum’s past and its contemporary interventions.
The gallery sequence unfolds as a linear progression beginning at the Orientation Gallery near the Great Hall, moving through the expansive High Gallery and more intimate Low Gallery, and culminating in the Finale Gallery. These spaces are organized as a series of connected rooms with varying scales, ceiling heights, and lighting conditions to support different types of exhibitions while maintaining visual continuity. The layout is anchored by historic architectural elements at both ends, creating a spatial dialogue between the Museum’s past and its contemporary interventions.
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Miriam Peterson
Nathan Rich
Jahaan Scipio
Martin Carrillo
Kurt Huckleberry
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