Lisa Phillips, who was appointed to steer the New Museum in Manhattan in 1999, will finish her transformative tenure on the establishment subsequent spring. The museum introduced Phillips’s retirement, on the finish of her present contract in April 2026, on Thursday (25 September).
When Phillips joined the New Museum 26 years in the past, it was primarily based in a rented house in Manhattan’s Soho district. Subsequently, like a lot of New York’s modern artwork scene, the museum relocated to Chelsea, renting house contained in the since-shuttered Chelsea Artwork Museum. Then, in late 2007, the establishment moved right into a purpose-built house on the Bowery, designed by the structure agency Sanaa. That constructing has been closed to the general public since final yr because the New Museum erects an $82m enlargement next-door, designed by Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas of OMA with Cooper Robertson, which can double the museum’s exhibition house. The museum is because of reopen this autumn, a crowning achievement for Phillips’s transformative tenure.
“The reopening of this expanded campus presents the perfect second to move the baton to a brand new era of leaders who will information the establishment into its subsequent chapter,” Phillips mentioned in a press release. “I’m immensely happy with all of the work we’ve achieved collectively, taking our future-forward establishment into a brand new period with a powerful basis, a vibrant and various viewers, and an expanded advanced of two contiguous buildings that may allow ever extra bold programming.”
After stepping down, Phillips will formally tackle the title of “director emeritus”. She may also curate an exhibition on the museum subsequent yr chronicling the inventive and cultural significance of the Bowery, a central thoroughfare on Manhattan’s Decrease East Facet the place artists from Brice Marden and Eva Hesse to Lynda Benglis and Sprint Snow have had studios at numerous occasions.
Along with massively growing the establishment’s bodily footprint, Phillips led the New Museum by way of a interval of expansive affect. Its workers contains the inventive director Massimiliano Gioni, the influential curator behind the central exhibition on the 2013 Venice Biennale, in addition to the curator Vivian Crockett and senior Gary Carrion-Murayari. The museum additionally launched a closely-watched triennial in 2009, whose sixth version is because of open subsequent yr with Crockett and Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) curator Isabella Rjeille on the helm.
“Constructing on our roots as an experimental establishment dedicated to risk-taking, [Phillips] led the creation of our flagship Sanaa constructing on the Bowery in addition to the OMA constructing at present rising subsequent to it, catapulting our museum right into a globally recognised hub of latest artwork and tradition the place interdisciplinary entrepreneurship, institutional useful resource sharing and neighborhood engagement are paramount,” James Keith Brown, the president of the museum’s board, mentioned in a press release. “We at the moment are a carefully watched supporter of difficult and untested artwork, incubating new concepts and expertise. Alongside the way in which, Lisa has mentored a brand new era of high expertise within the area—together with many ladies for whom she has set an distinctive instance and who she continues to affect by sharing her appreciable information, perception and experience.”
