The next show up at New York’s Brooklyn Museum will inaugurate its new first-floor gallery spaces, adapted from nonpublic spaces. Some significant new acquisitions will take the limelight to comprise “Thinking Big: Recent Design Acquisitions,” organized by Barry R. Harwood, the museum’s curator of decorative arts. From March 4 through May 29, 45 20th- and 21st-century objects that the museum has added to their permanent decorative arts collection since 2000, including many large-scale objects that have never before been on view.

The institution’s focus on acquiring 20th- and 21st-century works began in the 1970s, the same era that an extension designed by Prentice & Chan, Ohlhausen began making its way across the south elevation of the east wing for completion in 1977. Since then, the museum’s original nineteenth-century landmark building designed by McKim, Mead & White has undergone more than a few additional renovations and expansions. Perhaps most noticeable is the 2004 new front entrance and public plaza, a $63-million-dollar construction project designed by Polshek Partnership Architects. The project added a new main entry beneath the monumental façade, whose staircase was removed in 1934.

“Thinking Big” will be the first exhibition in a gallery that is part of a larger renovation, the first phase in a program that will redesign and transform much of the Museum’s first floor beyond the Rubin Pavilion and Lobby, which opened in 2004. Among the works featured in the exhibition are “Cinderella” Table by Jeroen Verhoeven, 2005; Chest of Drawers, Model #45, “You Can’t Lay Down Your Memories” by Tejo Remy, for Droog, 1991; “Nirvana” Armchair by Wendell Castle, 2007; Spacelander Bicycle by Benjamin Bowden, 1946; and Womb Chair by Eero Saarinen, 1947-48. Objects by Charles Eames, Cindy Sherman, Konstantin Grcic, Francois Jourdain, and Harry Allen will also be included.

Several themes, dictated by acquisition patterns, are observed across the show’s selections. Trends include Brooklyn-designed objects, young designers, unusual materials and innovative production methods, designs for children, and mid-20th century modernism. Belonging to the latter, an apple-red bicycled designed in 1946 by Benjamin G. Bowden was manufactured in Grand Haven, Michigan, from fiberglass, metal, glass, rubber, while Charles and Ray Eames designed their sinuous, black-and-white FSW (Folding Screen Wall) in molded plywood and canvas. Still in the same category, Florence Knoll Bassett’s 1954 Side Chair, Model 31 in chromed metal and fabric rounds out the American contributions. From an American in his own category, the gleaming fiberglass “Nirvana” armchair by Wendell Castle, often called the founder of the art furniture movement, is a showstopper.

But if there’s anything that could steal the show away from the significant line-up slated for “Thinking Big,” it could just be the Brooklyn Museum’s “ReOrder: An Architectural Enviornment by Situ Studio,” a large-scale, site-specific architectural installation opening on the same day and inaugurating the museum’s project for the 10,000-square-foot first floor Great Hall, recently renovated by Ennead Architects. Brooklyn-based Situ Studio’s installation of stretched fabric canopies and integrated furnishings will swell and billow, expanding on the silhouettes of the existing giant colonnades and evoking the ambiance of a giant ballroom filled with swishing skirts.

For more information: Brooklyn Museum, (718) 638-5000; http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/