Metropolitan Museum sets $900m new gallery.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art plans $900 million in interior construction projects aimed at dramatically enhancing the museum's displays of Hellenistic and Roman art, Etruscan art, Islamic art, 19th-century art, modern art and modern photography.

The major new "building-from-within" program will also substantially upgrade the Museum's Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education, the traditional welcoming point of entry for some 125,000 school visitors each year. To finance the projects, the museum announced a new plan to complete private funding for the construction and rehabilitation work.

Museum director Philippe de Montebello said that the recently closed museum restaurant, located on the first floor at the south end of the main Fifth Avenue building, will now be overhauled and converted back to gallery space so that the Met's vast collection of classical art--considered one of the finest in the world--can again be displayed here in a new Leon Levy and Shelby White Roman Court and surrounding galleries.

Until 1949, the sky-lit space, designed and built by McKim, Mead and White, had served as the museum's principal gallery for Roman sculpture.

Scheduled to open to the public in the spring of 2007, all of the new "building-from-within" projects will take place on the south end of the Museum.

Construction will begin shortly on the Roman Court, as well as on the Uris Center for Education, which will remain open and fully functioning, at somewhat reduced levels of capacity, while work goes forward.

Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates designed the project.

The museum will created a Fund for the Met capital campaign, after meeting and exceeding its most recent goal of $650 million, and will expand its goal by $250 million to a new total of $900 million. The Met has already raised private funds for half the cost of the core and shell of the new Roman sculpture court, construction of which will begin immediately.

The balance of construction costs for the new Roman project will also be raised privately.

"This new phase of our capital campaign reflects the urgency of these construction and endowment projects," said E. John Rosenwald, Jr., vice chairman of the Metropolitan and executive chairman of The Fund for the Met. "There is a critical need to enhance our facilities in order to best serve our many audiences and continue to fulfill our mission to educate and to inspire, all at the very highest levels. With great appreciation of our past donors, we look forward to these new challenges with enthusiasm and optimism."

"The new galleries that will be built from within will reopen to visitors some of the most majestic spaces in its landmark building, and, of vast significance, permit the institution's outstanding collection of Hellenistic, Roman, and Etruscan art--long in storage--to return, at last, to public view in breathtaking new galleries," said de Montebello.

"At the same time, the renewal work we plan to undertake immediately below the new Roman Court will create a suitably inspiring gateway to the Museum for its youngest visitors--the museum-going public of the future--namely, the students and school groups from throughout our City and region whose proper, stimulating introduction to great art we take as a crucial aspect of our Museum mission."