Enter Through the Gift Shop: Bob Stern’s Score-Settling Strategy for New NYC Museum

Architect Robert A.M. Stern is courting a new generation of fans with his firm’s design for the Museum for African Art, slated to open next spring in its new $95 million home on Fifth Avenue and East 110th Street. The museum, which spans approximately 75,000 feet and four floors of a 19-story residential tower, features a soaring glass atrium through which all visitors will enter—including children and school groups. It’s Stern’s way of settling a score with the museums of his youth, notably the Museum of Natural History. “As a New York kid, every time I went there, I was taken to this dreary space,” he said at a recent press briefing. “I would make my parents take me again so I could go through the front door.” There are other advantages to whisking younger visitors through the main entrance en route to a classroom tricked out by Studio SUMO’s Yolande Daniels. Added Stern, “Besides, if they pass the gift shop, they’ll want to buy something.”

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