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- [00:00]
Commercial Narrator
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- [00:30]
UPS Store Advertiser
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- [00:35]
Lisa Phillips
How quick?
- [00:36]
UPS Store Advertiser
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- [01:01]
Commercial Narrator
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- [01:40]
Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. The new Museum is back after being closed for two years. There's been an $82 million restructuring of the Bowery space and it is much more, much bigger. 60,000ft of expanded exhibition area that doubles the museum's previous capacity. The new New Museum reopens to the public tomorrow with a building wide exhibit that includes work from over 150 artists. The show is called New Memories of the Future, opening this weekend and to see the show it is free. With me now to preview the new museum's opening and what you'll find in the expanded space is longtime director Lisa Phillips, who is announced she's retiring in April after 27 years in charge. Hi Lisa.
- [02:30]
Lisa Phillips
Hello.
- [02:31]
Alison Stewart
And we also have with us artistic director Massimiliano Gioni. Welcome back to the show.
- [02:35]
Massimiliano Gioni
Thank you.
- [02:36]
Alison Stewart
I'm gonna ask you the basic question, Lisa. How are you feeling now that the museum is about to open?
- [02:42]
Lisa Phillips
Very excited and also Relieved that it is. Finally the day has come and it's the first day of spring.
- [02:49]
Alison Stewart
It's a perfect day. How are you feeling now that the museum is ready for?
- [02:53]
Massimiliano Gioni
Very excited, a little exhausted, like probably all of us. But we have a great show and a great building and ready to welcome all of the viewers.
- [03:03]
Alison Stewart
Explain to us how the expansion of the building, why was it needed? Why did you see it as its vision?
- [03:12]
Lisa Phillips
Yeah. So we have been expanding continuously over our 50 year history, and this is the latest expansion, and we finally now have a space that is commensurate with our ambition and our program. We needed more space, we needed vertical circulation, we needed more of a horizontal flow. And we needed production spaces to support the artists that we have in residence and that are making new commissions that we work with on a regular basis.
- [03:44]
Alison Stewart
Tell us a little bit more about the architecture firm. Yeah.
- [03:48]
Lisa Phillips
So the building is. It's really now a second building, expanding on our first and connected to our first. We call it a new campus, multiple buildings. But it's an unusual situation because the first building, which we opened in 2007, designed by the Japanese firm Sana, they went on to win the Pritzker Prize after that building went up. And it is a very distinctive piece of architecture, and it's our flagship building. So it was quite an assignment for Oma, who is the architect of our second building, to build right adjacent to this architectural landmark and monument. So we did an architectural competition 10 years ago, and we selected Omar. This is their first public building in New York City.
- [04:45]
Alison Stewart
Oh, that's interesting.
- [04:47]
Lisa Phillips
And we're just thrilled about it. And we chose them because of the way they responded to this very, very specific condition of building right adjacent to an architectural monument.
- [05:01]
Alison Stewart
Massimiliano, what excites you about the new space in terms of what you can do as a curator?
- [05:07]
Massimiliano Gioni
Well, I always say that museums are a gym for the mind. You know, you go to museums to exercise freedom and to learn to coexist with difference. And so we'll do more of that. The flow that is created by the new staircase makes the whole experience of navigating through the space much more exciting, with incredible vistas inside and outside. But most importantly for me, and I think for the viewers and the artists, we have more room for art. We'll continue doing what we specialize in, which is to give the first exhibitions to artists. And that can be very young artists or very. That, for different reasons, haven't had the recognition they deserve in New York City. And then big thematic shows that tackle the most urgent questions of today, the New Museum, from its very origin, has given amazing first shows to artists ranging from Adrian Piper to Jeff Koons, David Emmons, Anna Mendieta, John Baldessari, Faith Ringgold and Judy Chicago. You name them and we'll continue doing that. And we really are a site of productions of the future, if I needed to be. Very, very. But that's really what we do.
- [06:21]
Alison Stewart
Lisa, what did you learn from the original move in 2007 that helped you and helped the architects understand what they needed to do?
- [06:34]
Lisa Phillips
So that was our first freestanding, dedicated building. And it gave us a recognition in the world and certainly within the city that we had not had previously. So it really expanded our audience and recognition for who we are and our mission and our special place in the city. We don't have a collection at the New Museum. We're a non collecting institution. But we support the production of new works and support new projects by living artists. This is what we do. And that's a very special and different kind of mission from most museums.
- [07:20]
Alison Stewart
How did you consider how the museum would fold into the neighborhood as you were creating it?
- [07:27]
Lisa Phillips
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, we just migrated a few blocks east from Broadway, where we had been before, over to the Bowery. And the Bowery at that time was kind of this interzone between neighborhoods, but a place that people really weren't looking at. And we thought that was really perfect for us because it wasn't sufficiently appreciated, recognized and active as it could be. We started. We also always follow the artists. And the artists, of course, had been there for many years. Many artists that we knew were working, living and working on the Bowery. And we started to do an archival project called the Bowery Artists Tribute, collecting information on the hundreds of artists that have lived there since the 1950s, from every generation, from Abstract Expressionists to Pop artists, Minimalists, post Minimalists and on to today. So that was one way that we got very familiar with the neighborhood. But we've also partnered with other organizations all around the Lower east side and surrounding neighborhoods of Little Italy, Chinatown.
- [08:47]
Alison Stewart
It's really cool with a new museum because the staircase is massive and you're going up the staircase, and you're going up the staircase, and you're going up the staircase and then you get to the top and there are these sky rooms up there. What is your hope for how the top of the museum is going to be used?
- [09:05]
Massimiliano Gioni
Well, OMA had this great idea, this great vision. First of all, they sat back at the bottom and by doing that, they actually create a plaza at the terminus of Prince Street. Actually, if you walk straight from the studio where we are recording, you'll meet the new plaza. And Oma's office is next door. So it's a beautiful downtown story. Also, Lisa is too modest, but she built two buildings in downtown and by two Pritzker award winning architects. I don't think there are any other director in New York City. And you know, Sana was the first building designed by a woman, the first museum designed by a woman in New York City until the shed opened. And that is a record worth celebrating. But so Oma had this great idea to slant back at the bottom, opening up a plaza where we will also have commissions by new artists. And then they slant it at the top, which lets the Sana building shine. I thought of it as a kind of control tower that captures all the signals of creativity from around the world. And at the top they concentrated all the activities such as education, New Inc. Our offices. So they thought of the top as the brain and the site of production and intellectual and discursive platforms. And then the rest of the body is the dream of the mind, where you encounter artists and artworks and. Yeah, and what I hope are inspirations for. For artists and for our visitors.
- [10:36]
Alison Stewart
We are previewing the reopening of the new museum following its two year closure and an $82 million renovation and expansion. The museum reopens to the public tomorrow. There's a building wide exhibit called New Memories of the Future. My guests are the new museum director, Lisa Phillips and artistic director Massimiliano Scioni. Lisa, how did you operate the museum when it was closed for two years?
- [11:02]
Lisa Phillips
We had a big construction project going on that was very demanding, but it also gave us an opportunity to spend a lot of time with our international community. We have an international board, we have international supporters, we have international partners. And so while we are very rooted in downtown New York and this city, we really have an international profile. And Massimiliano is a testament to that. We have a staff that is spending a lot of time in the rest of the world. And we had more time over the last two years to re engage and interact with those partners.
- [11:49]
Massimiliano Gioni
And we worked a lot actually in the neighbors too. The Lower east side is. I live in the east village in St Mark's and the Lower east side is a very special place in New York with a great cultural and linguistic diversity. I always say we are a museum with an accent, and that reflects not my own accent, but the accents that are Spoken in the Lower east side, which is one of the most diverse neighborhood in New York. And while we were closed, particularly with our education department, we did a lot of literally door to door work. We have teaching artists that offer after school programs in public housings in the Lower East South. We have teens programs that welcome now hundred teens every year that stay with the new museum. They learn by meeting artists, they learn making art, they learn how museums create new professions. So there has been a lot of work behind closed doors that has also rooted us more in our neighborhood and in the communities around us.
- [12:55]
Alison Stewart
It was an $82 million project. Lisa. I went and I looked at the donors and I thought like, what was Lisa's pitch to these people about why they should give to a new, new museum?
- [13:09]
Lisa Phillips
Well, we, we are always new. We have to be. It's our mission, it's our purpose, it's our name. And so as I mentioned, we, it's been a long evolution over 50 years from a single room operation with a volunteer staff of three to what we are today, which is a world class institution that's, that's known throughout the world and, and really recognized for its outstanding program. So our community understood, understands and understood that we needed to keep growing. We needed an expanded campus. We needed this second building. We already owned the building. We had purchased it right after we opened the SANAA building. We purchased a building next door and we had filled it with programs, but we couldn't make it publicly accessible in its form in the state that it was in. It had to be either renovated or rebuilt. And we concluded ultimately that rebuilding was the best way to connect it to our existing building seamlessly and to fulfill the civic function that we must uphold. So that's.
- [14:28]
Alison Stewart
Those are all good reasons.
- [14:29]
Lisa Phillips
Those were all good reasons. And we had a community that really wanted to stand behind us and support us, including the city and the state.
- [14:41]
Alison Stewart
I was amazed at how big it was. I just kept going from room to room to room. I was like, this place is huge.
- [14:50]
Lisa Phillips
It is exponentially.
- [14:52]
Alison Stewart
It's so big compared to what it was.
- [14:54]
Lisa Phillips
It's twice as big as we had been previously, but it feels three times the size. But the beautiful thing about the design that OMA presented is how it sets back, as Massimiliano said, from the street. When you're looking at it from the street, it looks much smaller than the SANA building, but in fact it's not. It just is much deeper floor plate. But it gives a lot of respect to the first building while preserving its own very Unique character which is full of unexpected moments like the stair.
- [15:32]
Alison Stewart
We'll talk more about the new museum after a quick break. This is all of It. You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests in studio are new museum director Lisa Phillips and artistic director Massimiliano Gianni. We're talking about the new museum reopening to the public tomorrow in a brand new space. They have a building wide exhibit, new humans and memories of the future. Massimiliano, what's the big idea of this show?
- [16:11]
Massimiliano Gioni
Well, the big idea of the show is very much inspired by the building itself. We thought we are opening a new building. Opening a new building in 2026 is a different proposition that opened the first building in 2007. Ideas of growth and whether there is even such a thing as the future have changed in the wake of COVID And so we thought by building a new building, we are essentially giving a vote of confidence to the fact that there is a future. And we thought, oh, let's look at how artists have imagined the and we made them bigger by looking at throughout the 20th century and looking at architects, writers, scientists, a couple of basket cases and other visionaries that particularly are surveying how definitions and understanding of the human have changed under the pressure of new technology. So it's a show very much about the fears and aspirations we are witnessing today because of AI and the new technologies. But he compares our experiences today with a whole history that also proves that we've been there before. We have confronted these fears and these myths and these hopes. And fortunately we survived them and at times at tremendous cost. But we are also survived them and we are better for it.
- [17:27]
Alison Stewart
There's a quote in the opening wall text from a Czech writer from 1920 that says nothing is stranger to humans than their own image. How does that sentiment connect to the art you curated for the exhibit?
- [17:40]
Massimiliano Gioni
Yes, that was very much an inspiration for the entire show. So the word robot that, you know, we speak of every day now, we got to the point that our computers ask us to demonstrate that we're not robot by identifying the traffic lights and zebra crossing. So we are at the point in which machines are asking us to prove we are not machines. And it's certainly a very strange existential moment to be in. But the word robot was actually invented in 1920 by Carl Kapich in a little play, beautiful play that I really advise everybody to read, called Rossum Universal Robots. It's a parable of fears of substitutions by machines and in that book, he says nothing stranger to humans than their own image. And the show is essentially about that. In a way. The show is less about technology. It's more about how we represent and understand ourselves differently because of technology. So in a very simple way, you could describe it as a show about portraiture, engaging monsters and Frankenstein, robots and synthetic creatures. We have E.T. the actual automaton for E.T. we have alien. We have creatures from particularly. The show is based on a symmetry between 1920s and today. I hope it's not a fateful symmetry, because unfortunately, terrible things happened 100 years ago. Many of them are still happening today. And so it does analyze also the conflation of totalitarian ideologies and technologies, but it does so, I hope, also offering a glimpse of hope again, because if we have confronted those strategies and survived them, we know we can do it again, particularly with the help of visionaries and artists, as seen in the exhibition.
- [19:27]
Alison Stewart
Lisa, when you think about art, what's especially important about art during times of tremendous technological change?
- [19:39]
Lisa Phillips
Well, artists are usually are among the first people to see the future. And so we are a place for investigation, exploration, discovery. This is so important. And of course, we bring artists together to do that with the public. And so these are conversations that are critical to have right now. We're at the dawn of a new age at this moment now. The New Museum has had a long involvement with technology going back over 20 years. We brought in an organization called RiseHome.org as an affiliate. We started an incubator for our technology and design 10 years ago. We have a lot of expertise in this area on staff, and we have had continual daily conversations about how these changes are taking place and how we should be responding, greeting and how artists are responding. So it is part of our culture. It's part of the bigger culture. It's key.
- [20:52]
Alison Stewart
It sounds like it's been going hand in hand with the New Museum.
- [20:55]
Lisa Phillips
And as I said, it is the dawn of a new age. This exhibition is so timely and perfect for now, and I do believe that this change that we are entering into and this is the dawn of this age, is more profound than the Industrial Revolution. So, you know, there's just a lot for us all to think about. And as Massimiliano said, when machines are asking us if we're machines, you know, we've crossed the line.
- [21:31]
Alison Stewart
We've crossed the line. There are over 150 artists in this show. What was your creation process like?
- [21:39]
Massimiliano Gioni
You know, to tell the truth, as I walk through it, I don't Know, it was a kind of sleepwalking. No, it's a show that took not that long to actually execute. I would say maybe two years or a little more. But in all frankness, is a show I've been thinking about for a long, long. There are objects in there that I've seen in 1995 and I've been dreaming to bring together. There are many objects that, you know, sometimes, at least the way I work, I make shows so that I can show objects and artworks that I've been thinking about for a long time. But also, to answer your question about how it changes museum, you know, this exhibition is based also on a polemical proposition, in a sense, that the transformation is such that maybe we needed also to expand our notion of art and expand our notion of museums. So it's a show that includes visual culture, popular culture, scientists, writers. So it's a big machine in itself. And we've gone as far as asking Gemini to curate a little selection of images and write its own label. And scary enough, it's as good as the ones written by ourselves. And it's a show that morphs and where we have masterpieces like Salvador Dali and loans from MoMA, Metropolitan, the Tate, and museums all over the world. But we also have images that we literally just download from the Internet, and they are out there in the public domain. So from also the aspects of how to put a show together, it might look somewhat traditional. Certainly it's not because he has more moving parts than your kitchen.
- [23:15]
Alison Stewart
Moving parts overhead.
- [23:16]
Massimiliano Gioni
Yeah, snakes and flying robots. Flying robots. But it's also produced through that explosion and inflation of images that we are used to. You know, I think too often we imagine the museum as a place of contemplation, and this show imagines the museum as a kind of situation room where we learn how to deal with an inflation of images that is transformative and towards which we need to think critically. Not in any boring way, but certainly with the urgency that it's required by the times.
- [23:57]
Alison Stewart
Did you have any sort of change in opinion or some sort of revelation after doing this show about technology and art?
- [24:06]
Massimiliano Gioni
That's a very good question. I don't know. You know, I think when you. When I. If I were to generalize broadly, I think you could say that most of the artists in the exhibitions are either using. They are very pragmatic about technology. It's beautiful to see how they embrace throughout hundred years of history, technology, and they. They sabotage it to a certain extent. They use it as a medium as much as they would use oil paint or a pencil, but by doing so they reinvent it and they glitch it, they sabotage it and they short circuit. I mention the writing of Umberto Eco in the catalog who before becoming the noted semiotician and novelist, he wrote a beautiful essay called Programmed Art. He was writing in the 1960s about artists using computers early on and he said something beautiful. It says artists are mystics of arrhythmia, which means they are mystics of exceptions, mystics of mistakes, mystics of breaking down the efficiency of the machine. And that show is full of machine, unfortunately, literally also breaking down. It's going to be a maintenance nightmare. We have opened for 24 hours and we are literally this is a big shout out to all the team. Machines require more taking care than humans, but it's beautiful to see how the artists reinvent. It kind of jams the machine and by doing so discovers new possibilities for it.
- [25:37]
Alison Stewart
We are talking about the reopening of the new museum after a two year closure. It has got a building wide exhibit called New Memories of the Future. My guests are new museum director Lisa Phillips and artistic director Massimiliano Gianni. Tomorrow it is open from 11 to 7. What can people expect in terms of festivities? Lisa?
- [26:01]
Lisa Phillips
Well, we are sold out this weekend. We have a free weekend on offering. Members can come in, they can skip the line and come in. Just going to put a plug in for membership, but they can expect lots of surprises, something that you would never see in another museum. And that is what we do. There are some challenges, of course. It challenges you to think differently, to think about the world differently. And so it both excites and delights and look forward to welcoming everyone.
- [26:47]
Alison Stewart
I wanted to ask about the museum's facade. There's a piece that people see called Art Lovers before they even go in the museum. Would you tell us a little bit about.
- [26:56]
Massimiliano Gioni
Yes, it's a beautiful piece by Shabalala Self, who is a Harlem born artist and friend of the museum. She had her first big break with Trigger, which was an exhibition about gender at the New Museum. And then she went even on to support an exhibition by Faith Ringgold which is so special. You know, you have a younger artist who can support a legendary artist who she recognized as an inspiration since she was a teenager and had met Faith at an event. And so we invited her to be on the Facade. It's part of a program that started in 2007 and has featured artists ranging from Glenn Ligon, Chris Burden, Isa Gensk and many others. And you know Remember, when we commission works, we don't own them because we don't have a collection. So we gather resources, we produce the works together with many friends. But then after presenting them, the work also remains in the property of the artist, which is truly genuine support. And then it goes on to have a life of its own. You know, Our Wonderful Rose by Isa Gensk, and it's now planted in the garden of Moma. And. And that's a perfect metaphor of the seeds that we plant literally around the world. And so Shabalala had the inspiration from the building itself. We called the point where Oma Shoi Shigematsu's and Rem Kura's building and meets Sejima's and Niyazawa's building. We call that actually Shoi baptized the Kiss Point.
- [28:22]
Lisa Phillips
The Kiss Point.
- [28:23]
Massimiliano Gioni
And so Shava had this beautiful idea of this black couple of lovers meeting on the facade. Actually, we are looking for volunteers. They want to propose on one of our sky bridge that are right at this keys point. And it's just a beautiful image of, you know, not only two buildings coming together, but people coming together. This weekend we have some 12,000 people coming. We still have tickets. Show up if you want, but, you know, yes, it's a show full of puppets and monsters and robots, but it's a show that I think also reaffirms the fact that humanity is a process of social construction. And that means, in much more simple words, it's a show about bringing people together and people looking at people. And that, I think, is what art does and what Shabalala telegraphs with that image. You know, you go to museums to encounter art, but you also go to museums to be with others. And I think that's also what our building, now two buildings, say. It's two things coming together. And that's where art starts. You know, it's. You can do it alone, but you need others to share it with.
- [29:36]
Alison Stewart
This text we got said. Hi, Alison and team, really enjoying this conversation of new museum directors. Big thanks to Lisa for all she did for the institution and creating many, many great memories. Among our family's favorite was the amazing, amazing Faith Ringgold retrospective. That was great. Happy retirement. Talisa, what's next? We look forward to the new space. It's sort of a bittersweet opening for you. You're retiring in April, which is not that far away. You made the announcement in 2025. Why was this the right time?
- [30:10]
Lisa Phillips
Well, I've been at the museum for 27 years and have taken it this far and I am 71 years old. So it is time to hand it over to the next generation. It is the new museum, after all, the new museum. It should always be new, always be reinventing. And this seemed like really the perfect moment to turn the reins over to the next generation, who have been so essential to the place, to the art that's being created today, but also to the operation of the new museum. And we have such a fine staff and so many future leaders on our staff right now that are great colleagues and have really made this possible and have grown up at the museum. So, you know, we've been working together for 17 years.
- [31:14]
Alison Stewart
She hired you? Yeah.
- [31:15]
Massimiliano Gioni
Yes. 2006. So 20 years that we've been working together.
- [31:19]
Lisa Phillips
I was young when I came. He was really young. So we've been through a lot and it's been an incredible journey. And we've been able to take it to this point, which really does match the ambition of our program and our staff and our vision.
- [31:39]
Massimiliano Gioni
You know, we have a little mouse now as part of the exhibition. It's a robotic mouse in the lobby by Ryan Gander. And I think it's quite nice in New York City where, as we know, the kings of the street, the rats, we celebrate a little mouse, which I think it's a nice allegory of a museum that, yes, it's doubling in size. It still remains small and intimate. I think what makes special the new museum, you can still see a show in a few hours. It's not a multiplex. It's still an art house or maybe an art mouse. And it's a place that it's nimble and fast and can change. And that Lisa is kept really non bureaucratic and fast. And that are all qualities that are necessary to really capture and amplify the signals of contemporary art. And even in this moment of growth, I think it's important to remember we are probably the fastest museum in town and the one that is most, most receptive to change and to difference. And I think that's symbolized by the little mouse in the entrance. We are not, you know, we are not a limo. We are still a smart car even
- [32:51]
Alison Stewart
as we are growing quickly in the last minute. What are you most proud of in your 27 years?
- [33:00]
Lisa Phillips
I think the staff, the community that we've built, the board is really exceptional. And the programs that we've presented during this time are history making. That's what we do. We make history at the new museum. We have been so important to so many artists and they give back in so many ways and have been incredibly generous to the institution. And I'm very proud of that and our place in the city. I know we're giving the city something amazing with these two buildings.
- [33:35]
Alison Stewart
The new museum is open to the public starting tomorrow. My guests have been new museum director Lisa Phillips and artistic director Massimolino Gianni. Thank you for being with us. Happy opening.
- [33:48]
Lisa Phillips
Thank you for having us.
- [33:49]
Massimiliano Gioni
Break a leg.
- [33:51]
Lisa Phillips
See you all there.
- [33:52]
Alison Stewart
And that's all of it.
- [33:58]
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- [34:05]
Lisa Phillips
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- [34:07]
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- [34:15]
Lisa Phillips
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