"THERE'S A VALUE TO DOING THINGS FOR THE FIRST TIME.”

Frida Escobedo is making history as the architect behind the Met's new wing.

- BY ADRIENNE GAFFNEY

Above: Frida Escobedo on the roof of New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Frida Escobedo was a young girl of eight or nine visiting from Mexico when she first saw the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even now, as an architect tasked with creating a new wing for the museum—the first woman to do so in its 155-year history—she thinks back to seeing the space for the very first time. “It’s such a welcoming moment, almost like you’re walking into someone’s home,” she says.

The Met truly is a home, in many senses, both to New Yorkers and to lovers of art from around the world. “It’s one of the few institutions that recognizes that it belongs to everyone, and to no one in particular,” Escobedo says. “It recognizes that it needs to be in constant transformation....It’s almost like a kaleidoscope of what humankind can be.”

Working on a private institution that has a prominent public presence presents a tricky balance for an architect. It’s also a very big assignment. Escobedo’s designs for the five-story Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang wing, which will house the museum's modern and contemporary collection, will add more than 70,000 square feet of display space for art, increasing the museum's gallery space by 50 percent. The wing, which will open in 2030, marks a significant investment in modern art for the museum, a genre that's typically not thought to be its strength.