New Museum

The New Museum was founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, formerly a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art who felt living artists did not have the institutional focus they deserved. At the time, the New Museum was created to showcase “contemporary art made within a period of approximately 10 years prior to the present” and artists who were not widely known. Positioned between a traditional museum and an alternative space, the museum moved venues in its early years. From 1983 it was based in the Astor Building in SoHo and the exhibition program encompassed monographic shows of emerging artists—such as Joan Jonas (1984), Bruce Nauman (1987) and Ana Mendieta (1988)—and group shows organized around important social and political issues such as “Difference: On Representation and Sexuality” (1984), and “Damaged Goods: Desire and the Economy of the Object” (1986). In 2007, the New Museum moved into its purpose-built, SANAA-designed space at 235 Bowery with facilities including a theater, five floors of gallery spaces and a Sky Room with panoramic views of lower Manhattan. The museum bought the neighboring building in 2008 and OMA designed a new annex structure that would double the museum’s gallery space. The work broke ground in 2022 and is expected to be completed in 2025. The New Museum is also well known for its triennial, which began in 2009 and exhibits international emerging artists.