After 26 years as director of the New Museum, Lisa Phillips will step down from her position in April 2026, the Decrease Manhattan establishment introduced yesterday, September 25.
The information, shared in a press launch stating that Phillips will “retire from the Museum” on the finish of her contract, comes on the cusp of the New Museum’s anticipated reopening this fall after a significant $82 million growth and a virtually year-long closure to the general public. Whereas the establishment has nonetheless not set a date for the reopening, it’s projected for the top of this yr, museum officers informed the New York Occasions. In accordance with the museum’s announcement, the seek for its subsequent director will start this month.
Phillips informed Hyperallergic in a press release that her departure was “not a straightforward resolution,” however comes at a “pure transition level” following the museum’s reopening.
“After a lot thought and consideration, I’ve determined that it’s going to then be the precise time for me to step down after 26 years on the helm and go the baton to the following era of leaders who will chart the course of this subsequent chapter,” Phillips stated.
Phillips’s tenure has been marked by vital transformation and bitter labor controversy on the storied modern arts establishment. Her management started in 1999 when she left her longtime curatorial position on the Whitney Museum of American Artwork to take the reins from the New Museum’s late founder, Marcia Tucker. Beneath her route, the establishment grew from an experimental arts group with short-term places and a workers of 25 individuals right into a monolithic museum within the Decrease East Aspect’s Bowery with roughly 450,000 guests a yr and a 150-person workers. During the last two and a half a long time, Phillips has overseen greater than 200 exhibitions, together with solo exhibits for Simone Leigh, Jeffrey Gibson, Religion Ringgold, and Wangechi Mutu, and launched the New Museum Triennial, devoted to worldwide early-career artists.
Phillips’s management has additionally been marked by a sequence of labor controversies, significantly lately, as unionized workers accused administration of poor working situations, unfair labor practices, and stalled contract negotiations.
Employees have additionally scrutinized the pay disparities between workers and government management. (In accordance with the museum’s 2024 tax filings, Phillips’s compensation totaled almost $900,000.) The dispute peaked throughout the 2020 pandemic, when the museum laid off 18 full- and part-time workers, together with members of the union’s bargaining unit, citing income losses regardless of receiving a Paycheck Safety Program mortgage of $1–2 million. In response, the union filed a grievance with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board alleging that the museum had intentionally focused union supporters in its workers reductions. (The New Museum refuted the declare on the time, telling Hyperallergic that they “[did not] imagine this cost has advantage.”)
In response to Hyperallergic’s inquiry about Phillips’s departure and the museum’s seek for a brand new director, a spokesperson for Native 2110 UAW, which represents the New Museum Union, stated that they “sit up for growing a superb collective bargaining relationship with the brand new Museum management and to negotiating additional enhancements to the union membership’s working situations and financial standing.”
The announcement of Phillips’s forthcoming departure comes amid management adjustments at main museums within the metropolis. This month, Shamim M. Momin, co-founder of the nonprofit Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), started her new submit as director of the Bronx Museum. In the meantime, Christophe Cherix, the earlier chief curator of drawings and prints on the Museum of Fashionable Artwork, has began his new position because the establishment’s seventh director after Glenn Lowry’s departure final yr.
