Over the next five years, New York City will welcome two new momentous spaces for the arts, both along Manhattan’s iconic Fifth Avenue, some 40 blocks apart. The first is an airy new $550-million wing for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s modern and contemporary collection on the Upper East Side; the second is a new home for the groundbreaking National Black Theatre (NBT) in Harlem.
Both of these undertakings are led by the same architect, who, until now, had never completed a building for a cultural institution of this scale — nor had she even designed a major project in New York.
Frida Escobedo’s tandem commissions reflect the barrier-breaking superlatives she is now accruing. In a profession that…
