Lisa Phillips, director of New York’s New Museum, will retire after greater than 25 years within the publish, the New York Occasions reported Thursday.
The museum is presently present process a 62,000-square-foot growth that had been anticipated to open this fall, although no inauguration date has been introduced. It’s the second main growth Phillips, 71, has overseen since turning into director in 1999.
Of her resolution to step down, she instructed the Occasions, “It’s simply the best time for me to step down.”
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Throughout her tenure, the New Museum mounted a variety of surveys and retrospectives, together with these for Wangechi Mutu, Pipilotti Rist, Rosemarie Trockel, Carroll Dunham, Chris Burden, and Peter Saul. The museum additionally staged a sequence of influential group exhibits, amongst them 2007’s “Unmonumental: The Object within the twenty first Century,” centered on the altering face of sculpture, and 2011’s “Ostalgia,” about artwork beneath the Soviet Bloc.
As well as, the New Museum Triennial, launched in 2010 beneath Phillips, has grow to be a serious platform for recognizing rising expertise. Its subsequent version is scheduled for subsequent yr.
Her management, nevertheless, was not with out controversy. In 2010 the museum drew criticism for presenting a present of works owned by Dakis Jouannou, a trustee. Phillips additionally confronted criticism from employees who stated her wage—presently about $900,000, in response to the museum’s latest tax filings—was too excessive.
Across the time New Museum staff unionized in 2019, employees alleged that administration had tried to stop the group from forming. Reflecting on that interval, Phillips instructed the Occasions this week, “At first, I felt that it was antithetical to the tradition of the museum. However then I started to see that that is very a lot a brand new era talking, and we wanted to pay attention.”
Phillips has emphasised her function in enlarging the museum each bodily and financially. She oversaw its relocation to the Bowery in 2007, significantly increasing its footprint. She additionally added the incubator New Inc to its programming and introduced Rhizome, the art-and-tech group, beneath the museum’s aegis.
Earlier than taking cost on the New Museum in 1999, she had been a curator on the Whitney Museum. She was the establishment’s second director after founder Marcia Tucker.
Phillips is the second main New York museum director to announce her departure lately. Glenn Lowry of the Museum of Fashionable Artwork announced final yr that he would quickly step down, with Christophe Cherix set to steer that establishment.
The New Museum will quickly launch a seek for her successor as it really works towards a plan to develop its endowment by $50 million by 2027, in response to the Occasions.
