The National Museum of Mathematics announced Thursday that it will move to a new, larger building, which will double its classroom space and allow for

Math Museum Announces Move to New Location

submited by

Style Pass

2024-11-18 14:30:04

The National Museum of Mathematics announced Thursday that it will move to a new, larger building, which will double its classroom space and allow for more hands-on exhibitions to explain mathematical concepts to children.

The new space, a 34,363-square-foot leased location at 635 Sixth Avenue, in Chelsea, is expected to open in 2026, the museum said in a news release.

It is nearly double the size of its original location, at 11 East 26th Street, which opened in 2012 and closed in 2020 and pivoted to virtual programming during the pandemic. The museum is currently at a temporary space, MoMath on Fifth, at 225 Fifth Avenue, which it moved into this spring.

The move is “an objective measure of the success we’ve had over the years, and the success we’ve had because of people’s interest in informal math education,” Cindy Lawrence, the museum’s chief executive and executive director, said in an interview.

Planned exhibitions coming to the larger site include an exploration of the birthday paradox, the unlikely principle that in a room of just 23 people, there is more than a 50 percent chance that at least two share a birthday. Another planned exhibition is Allot Like an Egyptian, focusing on Egyptian fractions like one-third and one-eighth, which can be tricky for children to understand in relation to each other as bigger denominators mean smaller values.