Celebrating Forty Years Will Open a New Chapter in Its Building Expansion

This fall, the New Museum will celebrate its 40th anniversary with a dynamic series of exhibitions, programs, and publications. Honoring its rich legacy of advancing new ideas and promoting the work of groundbreaking artists, the Museum will engage its past, present, and future with the launch of a redesigned Digital Archive; a publication and exhibition exploring the Museum’s four-decade history; and a two-day event bringing together in conversation a range of artists from the Museum’s first forty years. In addition, the Museum will debut two new galleries as the first phase of an expansion, and will open the exhibition “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon,” which looks to the current cultural moment and beyond, ushering in a new chapter in the institution’s history.

In September, the New Museum will debut the first phase of its expansion with two new galleries in its adjacent building at 231 Bowery, connected to the Museum’s Lobby, along with a new storefront window display. The Museum will announce further details on the second phase of its expansion into 231 Bowery this fall.

The New Museum will launch its redesigned Digital Archive in September 2017. Design studio Linked by Air has crafted a bold new website that will present over 10,000 archival materials and objects that illustrate the Museum’s distinct forty-year history and its role in advancing contemporary art. Beginning with an interactive chronology and series of dynamic features, the new Archive will foreground the works of hundreds of pioneering artists and tell a larger story about the changing landscape of contemporary art from the late 1970s until today. A leading digital initiative, the Digital Archive preserves the Museum’s institutional memory while embodying its forward-thinking embrace of technology as a means of public engagement.

Photo: Dean Kaufman