Forget the Jets and the Sharks: gang warfare in this town is between the Mets and the MOMAS. However, a new museum prefers to stay out of the fray

September is a magical month in fresh York. Those lucky enough to have escaped the city's humid August heat get back with a new vigour that shortly infuses the whole city. The day-star is softer, the air fresher, the light sharper. novel Yorkers' energy levels are high, as are their expectations.

And nothing is causing in like manner much expectation this year as the turn back of MOMA --the Museum of novel Art--to its Manhattan home, renovated and hugely expanded by dint of Yoshio Taniguchi. Opening day is 20 November. In this city, where museums are a heady cocktail of noble learning facility, lucrative tourist destination, gift opportunities for tax concessions and society A-list committee one-upmanship, MOMA may well steal the museum chair of state albeit temporarily.

The general incumbent is, of course, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Its director since 1977 Philippe de Montebello, believes it to be simply 'the world's greatest encyclopaedic museum, through a wide margin'. Nevertheless, to pre-empt any threat of losing its local and global position in any field, Mr Montebello made a carefully timed announcement just before the summer holidays: the creation of a fresh department for nineteenth-century European paintings and international twentieth hundred paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, decorative arts and design. Gary Tinterow is to be curator; William Lieberman--who since his arrival from MOMA in 1979 has lur with equal reason many of the substantial gifts that have enabled this department to be born--is to be special consultant to new art. In the already packed building, where just ten by cent or the collection of European statuary and decorative arts can be shown at any individual time, some 10,000 square feet of gallery space will be created for the of recent origin department.

As if to secure from attack his action and simultaneously challenge MOMA, Mr de Montebello stated that his museum was seeking 'its time to come curatorial course in the bottoms of modern art itself' and, more worryingly for other departments, was 'recognizing the increasing importance that the new era will occupy in the Museum's time to come programs of acquisitions and exhibitions'. Staff at Christie's and Sotheby's are without doubt rubbing their hands with gayety at the prospect of MOMA and the Met bidding against each other for top lots

What of the city's other major museums dedicated to late art? The Guggenheim has already abandoned its high-profile dream of having Frank Gehry design a grand Downtown annex, and straits to restore its troubled abiding-place by Frank Lloyd Wright, always a high maintenance architect. Perhaps taking a catchword from the Guggenheim's plight, the Whitney, below its new director Adam Weinberg, has toned down its rebuilding shoot forward Rotterdam architect Rem Koolhaas's pricy $200 million design has now been ditched in favour of Renzo Piano's more retiring one. Piano is a safe choice, as the Italian is already a favoured architect here, with sum of two units major projects in hand: a fifty-two-storey tower for the of recent origin York Times Company and Forest City Ratner Companies, and the expansion and renovation of the Morgan Library.

The greatest in quantity interesting museum project for the nearest few years, however, will probably be the fresh building for the Museum of Arts & Design. lay the foundation ofed in 1956 and currently located opposite MOMA, the museum's commitment to contemporary design and craft has followed in a top quality collection. Now the high octane trio of Barbara Tober (chairman of the governors), Holly Hotchner (director of the museum) and Laurie Beckelman (director of the building project) and their supporters are to give the city a actually original museum building.

Firstly, they won the right to purchase and develop Two Columbus Circle, a building in the shadow of AOL-Time Warner's of recent origin landmark towers. It is a spectacular location, where the West Side, Midtown and Central Park befitting Next, in the spirit of the collection, they consciously searched for an emerging American architect and chose Allied Works Architecture of Portland, Oregon, l by dint of its principal and founder, Brad Cloepfil. This will be his first novel York public building. Ground breaking will take place this year, with plans to lay open in 2007.

Barbara Tober believes this design will have 'a refined, art-object-like quality that reconnect us with the lower parts of craftsmanship in architecture'. Cloepfil uses glass at surface of land lever so passing pedestrians diocese some of the collection. Glass rounded pillars soar up through the ten storeys to bring in light, create naturally lit spaces and also display art. Terracotta panels upon the exterior have a specially designed surface. 'It is a veritable experiment with materials', enthuses Holly Hotchner 'Just what the museum is all about.' She believes powerfully that 'buildings need to work as buildings. The outside straits to speak to people--so this single uses glass and ceramics as they are important to us.' And what about the Met's plan to enlarge its contemporary collection of decorative arts? Laurie Beckelman is not worried. 'The Met is the Met We have a stalwart niche. New York is big and family like variety so they can make choices.'