The Museum for African Art gets a proposed $12 million endorsement from New York Governor Eliot Spitzer to complete construction on its new Fifth Avenue residence.
New York's Governor Eliot Spitzer proposed on September 24, 2007 an allocation of $12 million to assist in the construction of a permanent home for the Museum for African Art on Fifth Avenue between East 109 and East 110 Streets in Manhattan, facing the northeast corner of Central Park. The state funding will supplement $12 million budgeted for the project earlier this year by New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The last addition to Fifth Avenue's group of prestigious art institutions was the landmark 1959 Guggenheim Museum designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959); its spiral exterior and infrastructure are currently undergoing a much-needed massive restoration.
The Museum for African Art was founded in 1984 by Susan Mullin Vogel. A former Curator of African Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, she's currently Professor of African Art and Architecture at Columbia University. The museum's collection, now in storage, has been exhibited in temporary rented locations in Manhattan and Long Island City. Its permanent $80 million facility, under the direction of museum president Elsie McCabe, is scheduled to open in late 2009. 85,000 square feet of the building's ground level will be devoted to the museum; 116 residential condominiums will occupy the space above it. The complex was designed by Robert A.M. Stern, the Dean of Yale University's School of Architecture.
