New Museum Names Massimiliano Gioni as Next Director Ahead of Expansion
The New Museum in New York has appointed Massimiliano Gioni, its longtime artistic director, as its next director. He will assume the role on August 1, succeeding Lisa Phillips, who announced her retirement after 26 years last September.
The move formalizes a leadership transition that has been years in the making. Gioni joined the museum in 2006 as a curator and was promoted to artistic director in 2014. Since then, he has been central to the institution’s curatorial identity, helping turn the New Museum into one of the most closely watched venues for contemporary art in the United States.
His imprint is visible in a series of exhibitions that helped define the museum’s public profile. Among them are After Nature (2008), Ostalgia (2011), Here and Elsewhere (2014), The Keeper (2016), and New Humans: Memories of the Future, the museum’s current exhibition and the one that inaugurated its expansion. In 2021, Gioni also collaborated with Naomi Beckwith, Glenn Ligon, and Mark Nash on Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, one of Okwui Enwezor’s final exhibitions.
Perhaps his most consequential contribution was the New Museum Triennial, which he launched in 2009 as The Generational Triennial: Younger Than Jesus with Lauren Cornell and Laura Hoptman. The project helped establish the museum as a key platform for younger artists and for debates about how contemporary art is framed, collected, and historicized.
Gioni’s reach has extended far beyond the New Museum. He has organized solo exhibitions for artists including John Akomfrah, Lynda Benglis, Judy Chicago, Nicole Eisenman, Theaster Gates, Faith Ringgold, Pipilotti Rist, and Nari Ward, among many others. He has also directed major international biennials, including Venice in 2013, Gwangju in 2010, Berlin in 2006, and Manifesta 5 in 2004.
In a statement, board president James-Keith Brown said Gioni had played “an essential role” in the museum’s evolution through exhibitions, partnerships, mentorship, and global relationships. Gioni, for his part, said the appointment was “a vote of confidence” in the institution and its staff.
With its expanded campus now taking shape, the New Museum is betting on continuity as much as change. Gioni’s promotion suggests that the museum wants its next era to build on the curatorial ambitions that have defined its recent history, rather than depart from them.
