An article today by Carol Vogel at nytimes.com said that "the Metropolitan Museum of Art will take over the Whitney Museum of American Art's Marcel Breuer building in 2015, when the Whitney opens its new museum in Manhattan's meatpacking district, according to the terms of a real estate agreement that the museum boards are pursuing."

The Whitney had been talking to several nonprofit institutions about the possibility of taking over its uptown site because it realized it cannot afford to run two museums, the article said, adding that "under the agreement the Met will occupy the Breuer building for at least eight years."

The Breuer building, which is located on the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and 75th Street, is one of the city's most important and prominent examples of Brutalist architecture with its cantilevered form and trapezoidal windows. It "has been primarily a home for American art, but officials at the Met said they would use it as an outpost for modern and contemporary art from around the globe," the article said.

The Met would move into the Madison Avenue building in four years, when the Whitney's new museum designed by Renzo Piano is scheduled to open on Gansevoort Street at the lower foot of the High Line elevated park.

"The prospect of running two expensive museums in two different parts of the city had weighed heavily on the Whitney's leadership. As things stand, the museum has been working hard to pay for the downtown site, a striking 200,000-square-foot metal-clad structure by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. So far the Whitney has raised about $500 million of the $720 million for the project, a figure that includes the cost of the construction as well as an endowment, officials there said," the article said.

"We're not taking modern and contemporary art out of our main building," Thomas P. Campbell, the director of the Met, said, "explaining that the Met is able to show only a fraction of its holdings, which the department of 19th-century, modern and contemporary art numbers at more than 10,000 works, not including drawings and prints or photography," the article said.

"I see the Breuer building as a laboratory, a place where we can be more creative in our programming without physical limitations," Mr. Campbell added. "This gives us the opportunity to work across department boundaries to do what other museums cannot." Because of its vast holdings, Mr. Campbell said, he envisions presenting contemporary and modern art in a historical context, exploring subjects and ideas culled from different centuries, countries, cultures and sensibilities.

It is not the first time the two institutions have contemplated joining forces. Briefly, in 1947, the Met and the Whitney agreed that they would merge, with the Whitney's collection joining an expanded American wing at the Met. But the arrangement never materialized.

"Under the agreement," the article said, "the Met will have the option to renew its arrangement in 2023, if the Whitney agrees. But that is years away and will come when the Met is expected to have completed the renovations to its modern and contemporary art galleries."

"There is still a possibility that the Whitney will be a two-site museum," Mr. Weinberg said.