The New Museum in New York will reopen on March 21 after two years of closure, the museum announced Tuesday. The institution was originally slated to reopen last fall.
Since March 2024, the New Museum has been shuttered as part of an expansion to a next-door lot that will add 60,000 square feet to its existing SANAA-designed building. The expansion, designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas, will bring its total footprint to nearly 120,000 square feet.
Of this additional 60,000 square feet, 9,600 square feet will be dedicated to exhibition space, almost doubling the museum’s current area for galleries. Additionally, 3,850 square feet will be earmarked for the museum’s incubator, New Inc, while 3,210 square feet will go to artist studios and education and special events space.
OMA’s design for the new New Museum also include an entrance plaza, a new 74-seat Forum, an expanded Sky Room on the seventh floor, and the addition of three elevators to aid with the circulation within in the building.
Several of these spaces will also include new artist commissions: Tschabalala Self will make a work for the facade; Klára Hosnedlová for its new Atrium Stair; and Sarah Lucas for the public plaza.
The expansion will also include a bookstore that is double the size of its previous iteration and a new restaurant that is operated by Henry Rich of the Oberon Group, with Julia Sherman serving as executive chef. The as-of-now unnamed restaurant will have a vegetable-forward menu and include a commission by Ian Cheng and furniture by designer Minjae Kim.
In a statement, Lisa Phillips, the museum’s director since 1999 who will retire in April, said, “Since our founding nearly 50 years ago, the New Museum has been a home for the most groundbreaking art of today and a haven for the artists who make it. Our new 120,000 sq ft 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.”
As part of the reopening weekend, the New Museum will offer free admission on Saturday, March 21 and Sunday, March 22. The funds for this are being provided by trustee Charlotte Feng Ford, who has previously ranked on ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list. Registration for those tickets will be available next month.
The museum also announced an increase to its admission prices. Adult tickets will rise from $22 to $25, seniors and visitors with disabilities from $19 to $22, and students from $16 to $19. Admission for visitors 18 and under, as well as recipients of SNAP/EBT benefits, will continue to be free.
When it reopens in March, the entirety of the New Museum will be given over to an exhibition titled “New Humans: Memories of the Future,” which will feature the work of more than 200 artists and thinkers. The thematic exhibition will “explore how dramatic technological and societal changes have spurred new conceptions of what it means to be ‘human,’” per a release.
Notably, it will pair the work of 20th-century artists like Francis Bacon, Salvador Dalí, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Kiki Kogelnik, Hannah Höch, and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven with contemporary artists such as Meriem Bennani, Cyprien Gaillard, Pierre Huyghe, Tau Lewis, Wangechi Mutu, Precious Okoyomon, Berenice Olmedo, Philippe Parreno, Hito Steyerl, Jamian Juliano-Villani, and Anicka Yi.
