New York’s New Museum to Finally Open in March

Initially touted to reopen last autumn, New York’s dedicated contemporary art museum will finally open its doors to the public on 21 March following more than three years of renovations and a decade of planning and development.

The $82 million, 60,000-square-foot expansion, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects OMA/Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas in collaboration with executive architect Cooper Robertson, doubles the museum’s exhibition space, adding to the SANAA-designed flagship building on Prince Street.

‘Our new 120,000-square-foot building on the Bowery signals our redoubled commitment to new art and new ideas, and to the museum as an ever-evolving site for risk-taking, collaboration, and experimentation,’ said Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis director of the New Museum, in a statement.

Along with exhibition spaces, the renovation also includes a dedicated artist-in-residence studio, a purpose-built home for the Museum’s non-profit ‘cultural incubator’ platform, NEW INC., an expanded bookstore, a restaurant, and new spaces for public programmes. 

The inaugural programme is headlined by exhibition New Humans: Memories of the Future, sited across the entirety of the museum’s expansion with works from over 200 artists, filmmakers, writers, architects, scientists, brought together under the theme of ‘what it means to be human in the face of sweeping technological changes’.

‘It feels inevitable to start with a show that looks at the future, and the futures that never arrived,’ the museum’s artistic director Massimiliano Gioni told The New York Times.

‘I think today is a moment in which we go through life viewing hundreds of images every day—if not thousands—and there is an experience of density that museums can participate in without being complicit in the system,’ Gioni said.

Contemporary artists from around the world, including Sophia Al-Maria, Meriem Bennani, Wangechi Mutu, Philippe Parreno, and Precious Okoyomon will be placed in dialogue with 20th-century heavyweights like Francis Bacon, Salvador Dalí, Hannah Höch, and Tatsuo Ikeda.

Additional commissions on long-term view around the building will include a project by Tschabalala Self on the museum’s façade, alongside a large-scale sculpture by Klára Hosnedlová and a piece by Sarah Lucas.

The reopening bookends Phillips’ tenure as director following nearly three decades in the director role, having announced her departure in September 2025. Phillips will retire in April 2026, and a search for her successor is currently underway. —[O]

Main image: Rendering of the expanded New Museum, New York. Courtesy OMA/bloomimages.de.