The Whitney and Frank Stella

I never liked the old Whitney Museum. I could appreciate the daring and daunting strength of Marcel Breuer's design, but it always seemed inhospitable, protecting rather than cherishing the trove of great American art inside. So when the museum abandoned its several rejected plans to expand around the Madison Avenue location and turned its face south, we could hope for the best. And we got it.

Securing an amazing location at the southern terminus of the High Line between Washington Street and the West Side Highway, the Whitney then gave Renzo Piano the plum design job. Piano had already worked with the Whitney on several Madison Avenue designs, but unconstrained by the past, he produced a swaggering, light-filled, imaginative building that seduces the eyes and senses before you even enter. It pays tribute to its far West Greenwich Village meatpacking district location in materials — enameled steel panels, horizontal volumes laid on top of one another, vast expanses of glass overlooking the Hudson waterfront on one side, the city on the other.

As a museum, it works brilliantly. Piano, who designed the famous Centre Pompidou, with its exposed pipes and valves and exterior stairs, all painted in primary colors, also gave Houston's Menil Collection a quiet dignity and, recently, the Harvard Art Museum’s new life and vivacity. Every Piano museum is flexible, so art can be shown in many ways, and human in its interior scale and thoughtfulness. At the Whitney, an enormous plaza outside the ground floor is connected to the lobby by a full window wall; people gather, sit, talk, even eat on the plaza, something unimaginable at the old Whitney or that bastion of unimaginative architecture, the Museum of Modern Art.

The first show at the new Whitney, which opened last May 1, was a wonderful journey through its permanent collection. Arranged chronologically and with only one piece from each artist, it was also a priceless retrospective of American art from the early 20th century to the present.

Currently the museum is exhibiting a cheerful, imaginatively installed retrospective of Frank Stella's long career as one of America's leading modernists. Since he began painting and showing in New York City soon after graduating from college, there is hardly an art movement of the last half century or even the contemporary scene — Stella, 79, still paints every day — that he has not tried. Most he has mastered: black, striped pictures; shaped canvases; brilliantly colored geometrics; op art that causes you to smile; sculptures good and bad.

The genius of the show is that it is not chronological but mixes styles and years for similarities and contrasts. While this can be confusing, it is also illuminating, because it forces you to see and think about Stella in new ways. It also reminds you that the Princeton graduate is the most literate of artists: Just look at Stella's titles for literary allusions, plays on words, fun. And you have time to enjoy it, since the show runs through Feb. 7.

The Whitney Museum is located at 99 Gansevort St., two blocks south of 14th Street, in the far West Village. It is the anchor for a neighborhood of fancy shops and fairly good restaurants. People are everywhere and provide amazing diversity and vitality. You can access the High Line outside the museum's east facade. The Whitney is open every day but Tuesday, 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. Call 212-570-3600 or go to www.info@whitney.org.