New York, NY — The New Museum announced in September that Lisa Phillips, the institution’s Toby Devan Lewis Director, will retire from the Museum in April 2026 after twenty-six years of leadership and following the expanded Museum’s public reopening.
Board President James Keith Brown said, “During Lisa’s extraordinary tenure, the New Museum has grown from a small experimental organization into a major international powerhouse with a widely acclaimed program. Building on our roots as an experimental institution devoted to risk-taking, she led the creation of our flagship SANAA building on the Bowery as well as the OMA building currently rising next to it, catapulting our museum into a globally recognized hub of contemporary art and culture where interdisciplinary entrepreneurship, institutional resource sharing, and community engagement are paramount. We are now a closely watched supporter of challenging and untested art, incubating new ideas and talent. Along the way, Lisa has mentored a new generation of top talent in the field—including many women for whom she has set an exceptional example and who she continues to influence by sharing her considerable knowledge, insight, and expertise. Her visionary leadership has been a transformative gift to our institution. On behalf of the entire Board, it has been a privilege and pleasure to work in partnership with her for over a quarter of a century.”
Lisa Phillips said, “It has been a tremendous honor to lead the New Museum for two and a half decades, working closely with a truly exemplary Board and Board President, an extraordinary staff, and exceptional curators—all committed to opening minds to new futures. I am immensely proud of all the work we have accomplished together, taking our future-forward institution into a new era with a strong foundation, a vibrant and diverse audience, and an expanded complex of two contiguous buildings that will enable ever more ambitious programming. The reopening of this expanded campus presents the ideal moment to pass the baton to a new generation of leaders who will guide the institution into its next chapter.”
Phillips will continue as Director through the conclusion of her current contract in April 2026, and after stepping down will become Director Emeritus. She is also preparing an exhibition about the cultural history of the Bowery which will open at the Museum next year.
An international search for Phillips’ successor will begin this month.
About Lisa Phillips
Phillips was appointed Director of the New Museum in 1999, succeeding the Founding Director, Marcia Tucker, as the museum’s second Director.
During her tenure, Phillips has grown the institution’s programs, space, and capacity. She has spearheaded two building projects of 60,000 sq ft each. She initiated and realized the plan for the New Museum’s first dedicated building in 2007, relocating the institution to its current flagship home on the Bowery. The opening of the building, designed by the Tokyo-based architects SANAA, who subsequently won the Pritzker Prize, was a watershed moment for the Museum, elevating its visibility and presence. Phillips likewise has overseen the development of the Museum’s second building on the Bowery by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas, which will once again double the size of the New Museum and its galleries, and will be named for the Museum’s top benefactor, the late Toby Devan Lewis. Together, the iconic pairing of these two adjoining buildings will further reinforce the New Museum’s position as the foremost cultural anchor of the vibrant Lower East Side neighborhood and an international destination.
Over two and a half decades, Phillips has increased the Museum’s programs, budget and support, annual attendance (from 45,000 to 450,000 visitors), Board (from twelve to fifty members), and staff (from twenty-five to 150 members), and has significantly diversified the institution’s leadership, team, and audience. She also built the staff and Board of Trustees into a distinctively international group, attracting some of the world’s leading curators and top patrons of contemporary art.
Most significantly, Phillips established the New Museum as one of the most admired contemporary art museums in the world with a robust program of critically acclaimed exhibitions. As a longtime curator and advocate for artists and their ideas, she cemented the Museum’s reputation around the globe as a leading platform for artists’ voices, a space for the public to engage with the most pathbreaking art not yet embraced by the mainstream, and a home for top curatorial talent.
Phillips has overseen more than 200 landmark exhibitions at the New Museum, including career-defining first museum solo presentations in New York for scores of artists such as William Kentridge, Cildo Meireles, Adrian Piper, Elizabeth Peyton, George Condo, Chris Ofili, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Carsten Holler, Urs Fischer, Mary Heilmann, Simone Leigh, Jeffrey Gibson, Mika Rottenberg, Peter Saul, Lynda Benglis, Pipilotti Rist, Sarah Lucas, Faith Ringgold, Wangechi Mutu, Theaster Gates, and Judy Chicago, among others. Phillips has also co-curated numerous lauded surveys at the New Museum, including exhibitions devoted to the work of Carroll Dunham, Paul McCarthy, John Waters, and Chris Burden.
In addition to the benchmark solo exhibitions for which the New Museum is known, Phillips has advanced the Museum’s commitment to innovation by introducing many ambitious experimental initiatives such as Museum as Hub, IdeasCity, and NEW INC, the first-ever museum-led cultural incubator, devoted to fostering interdisciplinary innovation between art, design, science, technology, and new media. She was an early advocate of emerging technologies and new, experimental art forms. In 1999, she established the Media Lounge, the first new media space in an American museum, which led to bringing Rhizome into the New Museum as an affiliate-in-residence in 2002. Such visionary advancements have been central to Phillips’ leadership and emblematic of her commitment to fostering talent for future cultural change—to expanding the definition of what a museum can be and do, significantly influencing the field itself.
Prior to joining the New Museum, Phillips was a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art for twenty years. At the Whitney, she organized more than twenty exhibitions, including the landmark surveys High Styles: 20th Century American Design (designed by Robert Venturi); The Third Dimension: Sculpture of the New York School; Image World: Art and Media Culture; Frederick Kiesler; Beat Culture and the New America; and The American Century: 1950–2000. She also organized important mid-career surveys devoted to Terry Winters, Cindy Sherman, and Richard Prince. Phillips was a curator for six Whitney Biennials from 1985–1997. For nearly a decade, she served as curatorial lead for the Painting and Sculpture Acquisition Committee, bringing many major works of art into the Whitney’s permanent collection, including Jay DeFeo’s The Rose, which she worked to unearth, restore, and preserve.
Phillips has authored more than thirty books and lectured extensively around the world. She also has served as a trustee of numerous organizations, including the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, White Columns, the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), and the LUMA Foundation. In 2013, she let a gender compensation study for AAMD, an extension of her longtime advocacy for and mentoring of women in the arts.
