Lisa Phillips, who was appointed to lead the New Museum in Manhattan in 1999, will end her transformative tenure at the institution next spring. The museum announced Phillips’s retirement, at the end of her current contract in April 2026, on Thursday (25 September).
When Phillips joined the New Museum 26 years ago, it was based in a rented space in Manhattan’s Soho district. Subsequently, like much of New York’s contemporary art scene, the museum relocated to Chelsea, renting space inside the since-shuttered Chelsea Art Museum. Then, in late 2007, the institution moved into a purpose-built home on the Bowery, designed by the architecture firm Sanaa. That building has been closed to the public since last year as the New Museum erects an $82m expansion next-door, designed by Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas of OMA with Cooper Robertson, which will double the museum’s exhibition space. The museum is due to reopen this autumn, a crowning achievement for Phillips’s transformative tenure.
“The reopening of this expanded campus presents the ideal moment to pass the baton to a new generation of leaders who will guide the institution into its next chapter,” Phillips said in a statement. “I am immensely proud of all the work we have accomplished together, taking our future-forward institution into a new era with a strong foundation, a vibrant and diverse audience, and an expanded complex of two contiguous buildings that will enable ever more ambitious programming.”
After stepping down, Phillips will officially take on the title of “director emeritus”. She will also curate an exhibition at the museum next year chronicling the artistic and cultural significance of the Bowery, a central thoroughfare on Manhattan’s Lower East Side where artists from Brice Marden and Eva Hesse to Lynda Benglis and Dash Snow have had studios at various times.
In addition to massively increasing the institution’s physical footprint, Phillips led the New Museum through a period of expansive influence. Its staff includes the artistic director Massimiliano Gioni, the influential curator behind the central exhibition at the 2013 Venice Biennale, as well as the curator Vivian Crockett and senior Gary Carrion-Murayari. The museum also launched a closely-watched triennial in 2009, whose sixth edition is due to open next year with Crockett and Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) curator Isabella Rjeille at the helm.
“Building on our roots as an experimental institution devoted to risk-taking, [Phillips] led the creation of our flagship Sanaa building on the Bowery as well as the OMA building currently rising next to it, catapulting our museum into a globally recognised hub of contemporary art and culture where interdisciplinary entrepreneurship, institutional resource sharing and community engagement are paramount,” James Keith Brown, the president of the museum’s board, said in a statement. “We are now a closely watched supporter of challenging and untested art, incubating new ideas and talent. Along the way, Lisa has mentored a new generation of top talent in the field—including many women for whom she has set an exceptional example and who she continues to influence by sharing her considerable knowledge, insight and expertise.”
