Dezeen reports on WHY’s design for the Rockefeller Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

“New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has selected Thai architect Kulapat Yantrasast of wHY to design a major overhaul of its wing for arts produced in Africa, Oceania and the Americas.

The Met revealed plans today for the $70 million (£54 million) transformation of the Micheal C Rockefeller Wing, where it hosts its Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas (AAOA) department.

Yantrasast, who runs New York architecture firm wHy, will update the galleries in the 40,000-square-foot wing on the southern side of the Fifth Avenue museum. The aim is to better showcase the collection of arts and artefacts created in sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific Islands, and North, Central and South America.

The Met selects Yantrasast’s “extraordinary design”

“Within AAOA alone there is the potential for highlighting parallels and contrasts that consider how societies across hundreds of cultures, five continents, and 5,000 years have addressed issues of authorship, patronage, trade, governance, state ideology, and ancestral commemoration,” said Met director Max Hollein in a statement.

“This major reinstallation of a core part of The Met’s global collection and the extraordinary design by Kulapat Yantrasast will be a manifestation of our ability to further advance the understanding, appreciation and contextualisation of the world’s most significant cultures.” ”

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