Inside the New Museum’s New Restaurant, Where Sleek Steel Meets Subterranean Design
How a cozy eatery was brought to life inside the museum’s slick, OMA-designed expansion
Photography by Alex Fradkin
Members of the art world—practitioners, publicists, dealers, and their hangers-on—have long congregated in eateries that they made their own. The 20th-century bright, young things had Parisian cafés, and the Dadaists had Cabaret Voltaire. The names of the New York restaurants, bars, and coffee shops where artists have gathered over the years could fill a cookbook-thick catalog—and following the New Museum’s reopening this past March, Oberon wishes to insert itself into its pages.
Oberon is the first-ever full-service restaurant designed by OMA, the international architecture firm behind the New Museum’s recent overhaul. Henry Rich, the restaurateur responsible for Brooklyn’s first natural wine bar (quite the superlative), among other ventures, came aboard to help make the new space feel like a neighborhood spot, tapping a series of artists and designers for collaborations that range from on-trend to unexpectedly awesome, like parting chocolates by avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson. Rich wanted to home in on the downtown New York art world—though the restaurant will also cater to tourists who want a quick bite after visiting the museum.
Accordingly, the restaurant’s design toes the line between interesting architecture and what Rich calls the “look-at-me experience.” In other words, it eschews gimmicks for good design that makes a splash. Located through a hidden entrance in Freeman Alley, the restaurant’s exterior is wrapped with a pane of frosted glass. A peek inside reveals a ledge topped with plants encircling the perimeter, below which a series of booths surround the restaurant’s pill-shaped space. A long, wooden bar, designed by Minjae Kim, reflects undulations from the visual installation by Ian Cheng behind it.
“My role was to bring back some familiar texture to the project, so that as a guest, you’re not overwhelmed by the severity of architecture,” says Kim, who designed many of the interior elements for what is his biggest project to date. He emphasized the wood grain on the bar and booth tables, above which he hung hand-crafted fiberglass pendants. In the reflection of the frosted glass, they seem to go on forever. “It was something I didn’t really foresee, but was a pleasant discovery once we installed them,” says Kim.
Materiality was important to OMA and Rich from both a sustainability and style perspective. Oberon is committed to being scope-3 carbon-neutral, and the team at OMA interpreted this brief through the medium of cork (five distinct ways). The material sequesters carbon while also providing a warm look that helps Oberon “obey the laws of gravity of scene-y downtown restaurants,” according to Rich. If you were wondering, these laws are as follows: “It has to be comfortable. It has to be fun. It has to be service-oriented. The food has to be simple enough that people want to eat it over and over again.”
Rich tapped multihyphenate chef-artist Julia Sherman to develop her first-ever full-service restaurant menu (a throughline of this project is one of firsts). Melon salad with sage and feta and dehydrated fig-leaf chicken demonstrate her seasonal, artful approach to cooking. The best part is how accessible Sherman’s food will be. “Artists, collectors, enthusiasts, gallerists—all have different budgets for going out to eat,” says Rich, who prioritized having menu items at lower price points. “So an artist can actually afford to be there—especially later on in the evening, where we want it to be a fun scene.”
Talking about the high cost of living, exorbitant New York rents, the lack of third spaces, and other financial barriers for artists is, at this point, as common as the announcement of a new members club or pickleball court. The art world has long felt inaccessible—but in one of the most prestigious art spaces in the country, Oberon ventures into approachable territory. The restaurant is set to open July 7.
