Client: 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Location:
New York, NY
Program:
Renovation of Ancient West Asian Art & Cypriot Galleries
Area:
15,000 sq.ft.
Construction Budget:
$40M
Completion Date:
Summer 2027
Role on Project:
Project Manager, Architect of Record

Moody Nolan

The Met Museum’s Ancient West Asian Art and Cypriot Galleries Renovation re-centers long-fractured historical narratives by placing Eastern and Western cultures in direct conversation. Rather than treating the collections as discrete or geographically siloed, the project deliberately de-compartmentalizes the galleries, allowing works to speak across territories, cultures, and time. In doing so, it reveals deep interconnections that existed in antiquity but have remained largely under-articulated within the Museum’s spatial framework.

The Ancient West Asian Art galleries are conceived as a sequence of architectural backdrops that draw directly from the material intelligence of the objects on view—clay, copper, bronze, gold, silver, and lapis lazuli—establishing a tactile and chromatic dialogue between artifact and architecture. The Cypriot galleries similarly foreground material specificity through the use of limestone, while a new monumental ramp physically and conceptually links the two collections. This intervention strengthens spatial continuity, enhances accessibility, and reinforces the relationship between visitors within the galleries and those moving across the Museum’s second floor.

Together, these architectural and design strategies reflect both the material origins and geographic contexts of the works on display, while creating spaces that invite gathering, reflection, and engagement from multiple vantage points. The scope of work also includes targeted skylight repairs and replacements, projected to reduce energy consumption in the galleries by approximately 40 percent—aligning curatorial ambition with environmental responsibility.