On March 18, 2016, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened the Met Breuer in Marcel Breuer's former Whitney Museum building on Madison Avenue. Architectural Digest documented the reopening date and the building's new role as a Met outpost; Vanity Fair described the restoration of the Brutalist structure and the inaugural curatorial program. The opening exhibitions paired "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible," a cross-period show about incomplete works from the Renaissance to contemporary art, with a survey of Indian modernist Nasreen Mohamedi. The event marked the Met's most visible attempt to expand its modern and contemporary profile by occupying a building already charged with postwar museum history.
Although short-lived, the Met Breuer sharpened debate over how encyclopedic museums should present modern and contemporary art.
