The New Museum Reopens with a Focus on Modern Technology

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The New Museum’s expansion under construction. License.

At Bowery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where the New Museum has stood since 2007, a 13-foot aluminum sculpture of two embracing figures now greets visitors before they step inside the recently renovated building. Tschabalala Self’s Art Lovers was commissioned specifically for the museum’s facade and now hangs close to where the original building meets the new expansion. Not quite three-dimensional, the brightly painted couple welcomes patrons with wide smiles. They could easily be symbolic of the institution's reopening on March 21: two figures, two buildings, one threshold.

That threshold has been two years and $82 million in the making. The New Museum’s original structure resembles a stack of cantilevered boxes, one side of which was opened up to accommodate the seven-story expansion designed by Rem Koolhaas and Shohei Shigematsu of the firm OMA. They collectively cover about 120,000 square feet, double the older footprint.

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Tschabalala Self, who created Art Lovers for the museum facade. License.

An atrium staircase now rises up where the two buildings meet inside. Hanging near it is a flax-based textile by the Czech artist Klára Hosnedlová. Like Self’s exterior sculpture, the piece is installed where the old meets the new. A full-service restaurant on the ground level stands ready to serve museumgoers and the general public. The addition also includes a 74-seat forum, an enlarged Sky Room on the top level, a dedicated studio for artists in residence, and a larger bookstore.

Much of this new space is filled up by the 732-object-strong opening exhibition. More than 200 artists whose work spans 140 years are showcased in New Humans: Memories of the Future. A wide range of sculptures, paintings, multimedia creations, photographs, and videos are organized around a central question: “What does it mean to be human in the face of sweeping technological change?” The rapid evolution and adoption of AI has made this inquiry more important than ever, especially in the context of the arts.

New Humans is organized in rough chronological sequence beginning with the early 20th century and stretching forward to present day. Its final gallery on the fourth floor features a futuristic collection of robots and androids created by dozens of artists. As the only New York City institution dedicated solely to contemporary art, it is fitting that the curators took a maximalist approach to include as many relevant artists as possible and explore the full breadth of what human technological innovation means.

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The New Museum in New York City in April 2015. License

The reopening also marks the close of a leadership era as Lisa Phillips, who directed the New Museum since 1999, will retire this spring. She is only the second director in its history after being founded in 1977. Phillips’ departure comes at a time when the institution is, in the most literal sense, larger than it has ever been. Her successor has not been announced.

As an institution that prides itself on forward momentum and big ideas, its shiny expansion is perfectly aligned with the museum’s ambitions. And, with an exhibition that is as timely as it is thought-provoking, those ambitions only seem to be growing.