The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and JFK Millennium Partners (JMP) will collaborate with four New York cultural institutions to bring art into John F. Kennedy International Airport’s Terminal 6 at a cost of $4.2 billion.
The terminal will now be host to art held in the permanent collections of the American Museum of Natural History, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. The loaned artworks will be shown within the terminal’s international arrivals corridor.
Spearheaded by architect Stanis Smith in collaboration with JMP, the new Terminal 6 will also include 19 permanent site-specific installations curated by Public Art Fund and a selection of rotating local artwork curated by Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning.
Lincoln Center is expected to contribute is a 140-foot mural reflecting its cultural offerings across music, theater, dance, and opera; MoMA has teamed up with artist Yoko Ono to create an installation inspired by Ono’s 2019 work Peace is Power; the American Museum of Natural History will contribute an installation that incorporates its notable research and scientific collections; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s installation will bring together 5,000 years of art from around the world.
Port Authority and JMP previously overhauled terminals at LaGuardia Airport and Terminal A at Newark Liberty International Airport.
“Thanks to the collaboration with four of New York’s premier cultural institutions, Terminal 6 will offer arriving visitors from around the world a unique New York experience before they leave the terminal,” Port Authority executive director Rick Cotton said in a statement.
In addition to these artworks, the terminal will also feature “state-of-the-art architecture, cutting edge technology and iconic, [and] locally inspired dining and shopping,” Cotton said.
The 1.2 million-square-foot terminal will include 10 new gates and is expected to create about 4,000 jobs. More than a dozen domestic and international airlines—including ANA, Avianca, Cathay Pacific, JetBlue, Lufthansa, and Swiss—will run out of the terminal. The first six gates are slated to open this year, with the remaining four due to be completed by 2028.
