Exhibit focuses on Big Apple's architecture for the arts.

The city's cultural institutions are building and expanding like never before. From museums and performing arts centers to botanical gardens and historic houses, organizations in all five boroughs are embracing technological and formal innovation to express their unique identities through cutting-edge architecture.

"City of Culture: New Architecture for the Arts," an exhibition presented by the Center for Architecture and the Alliance for the Arts, charts the extraordinary growth of New York's vibrant cultural landscape, and celebrates the excellence and diversity of architectural design that is helping to transform New York City into a global architectural capital.

The exhibition offers a vital perspective on New York's transformation. As stated by architect Elizabeth Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, "Lincoln Center was conceived as an urban Acropolis, white, gleaming and raised off the ground on a travertine plinth representing the most arrogant from of modernist classicism--elevating culture above the abject street while turning its back on the city. Combined with the mid-century urban renewal strategy of the superblock, the plinth defined the politics of exclusion. The political and social context has since changed and Lincoln Center is turning itself inside-out."

The exhibition presents fifty-three new projects, with an in-depth look at six featured installations--the New Museum of Contemporary Art on the Bowery, the renovation of the Bronx Zoo Lion House, the new Administrative and Visitors' Center at the Queens Botanical Garden, the Weeksville Heritage Center Education Building and Interpretive Landscapes, the restoration of the Snug Harbor Cultural Center Music Hall on Staten Island, and the transformation of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts--that illustrate the influence of the arts industry and innovative architecture on the revitalization of institutions, neighborhoods and our city.

The new buildings take on a number of challenges--from working within existing structures to identifying sustainable materials to keeping with the scale and historic characters of their respective environments--and respond with innovative solutions that identify ways to entice visitors. The buildings highlighted in the exhibit, all of which are currently under construction, offer a wide range of programs to which they are dedicated, including the care of living collections, the display of the visual arts, the presentation of the performing arts, and the interpretation of science and history. But it is their shared interest in unique forms and a total rethinking of how these forms enhance the function of the individual spaces that puts them at the forefront of architectural design not only in New York but also around the world.

"The cultural organizations represented in this exhibition have certainly provided the New York architectural community with unique opportunities to create quality work rich with passion, curiosity, inventiveness and collaboration," said Sylvia J. Smith, AIA, Principal, FXFOWLE Architects PC.

A confluence of various factors is creating this dramatic upsurge in new architecture for cultural institutions, including a growing public interest in building design and city planning; a greater focus among organizations on attracting wider audiences; the city's economic prosperity and accompanying construction boom; as well as a city government that is more committed than ever before to cultural development. The exhibition also underscores New York City's role in the development of cultural infrastructure--an investment that has not been seen since the 1960's.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a host of programs for adults and children, including panel discussions addressing the role of city funding and the overall economic impact on the City in tourism and jobs as well as exhibition tours for kids. Each program will further illuminate the bold and innovative architecture that defines New York City and its cultural institutions and neighborhoods. The exhibition is organized by Brad Waiters and Randall Bourscheidt, Alliance for the Arts, in partnership with the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter.