The Shortlist
Frick Collection, New York
April 2025
Henry Clay Frick’s Beaux-Arts mansion reopened in April this year after four years of renovations by the architect Annabelle Selldorf. Many of the changes have been guided by the blueprint of the original house. The display dedicated to Boucher, for example, has been returned to its original location, while swatches of green damask wall fabrics found in the attic were sent to a silk textile mill in Lyon to be recreated and now line the museum’s walls.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York – Michael C. Rockefeller Wing
May 2025
A four-year, $70m renovation by WHY Architecture in collaboration with Beyer Blinder Belle Architects has opened up the Met’s Rockefeller Wing – dedicated to art and artefacts from Africa, Oceania and the Americas – to natural light, giving monumental works such as the bis poles of Papua New Guinea greater prominence. The design is partly inspired by the works’ places of origin – the entrance gallery’s barrel-ribbed ceiling takes its cue from the Great Mosque in Djenné, Mali.
Museu de Arte de São Paulo
March 2025
Lina Bo Bardi’s vast glass and concrete home for Brazil’s first modern art museum, a landmark of modernist architecture opened in 1968, contains a trove of 20th-century Brazilian art and perhaps the finest collection of European art in South America. A new 14-storey, $43m slender black extension, designed by METRO Arquitetos Associados and unveiled in March, nearly doubles the museum’s space. Named after Bo Bardi’s husband – also the museum’s first director – it is connected to the existing building by an underground tunnel.
Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw
February 2025
The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw has existed since 2005 but until this year led a nomadic existence. Its new permanent home is a sleek white box designed by Thomas Phifer, on the Plac Defilad, in the heart of the city. The striking building features huge, high-ceilinged galleries, a twisted central staircase leading to an upper floor with panoramic views of Warsaw, and smaller wood-panelled ‘city rooms’ peppered between the galleries.
National Gallery, London – Sainsbury Wing
May 2025
The culmination of the National Gallery’s bicentenary was the reopening, after two years, of the Sainsbury Wing. The £85m project was conducted by Annabelle Selldorf and included lightening the ground level and replacing the oak floors. A rehang has allowed some 250 more works to be on permanent display and the creation of a selection of thematic rooms as well as rooms dedicated to individual artists, among them Rubens and Titian.
V&A East Storehouse, London
May 2025
The latest development on the former Olympic park in Stratford is something of an experiment: a storage depot-cum-museum, cleverly designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Some 600,000 items from the V&A collection are available to peruse, either among the open display racks or through the ‘order an object’ system, which allows visitors to view (and sometimes handle) objects up close. The David Bowie Centre, dedicated to the late musician’s archive, is also here.
The winner will be announced on 20 November.
The Shortlists | Artist of the Year | Museum Opening of the Year | Exhibition of the Year | Book of the Year | Acquisition of the Year
