At the point where Lower Manhattan’s Meatpacking District of list-only clubs and designer flagships begins transitioning into the West Village’s brownstones and cafés, the Whitney Museum of American Art opens the doors of its new, ultra-contemporary home by the Hudson River on May 1. With one of the world’s foremost collections of its kind numbering 21,000 works and counting, the bastion of 20th- and 21st-century art had long outgrown its uptown address at the Marcel Breuer building, which the Metropolitan Museum of Art will take over as an outpost of its own. The Whitney’s new Renzo Piano–designed digs more than doubles the museum’s former size at nearly 20,000 square meters, including indoor and outdoor exhibition spaces overlooking the High Line, a 170-seat theater, and two eateries conceived by famed New York restaurateur Danny Meyer. The inaugural exhibition America Is Hard to See (through September 27) focuses on American art from 1900 onward, including works by Hopper, O’Keeffe, and Calder. Call it a modern housewarming (99 Gansevoort St.;1-212/570-3600; Whitney Museum of American Art). —Gabrielle Lipton

This article originally appeared in the April/May print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“Whit Large”)