Lisa Phillips to Step Down as New Museum Director Following 2026 Reopening
After overseeing the New Museum’s transformation and expansion, Lisa Phillips will retire in April 2026, following the institution’s public reopening.
Lisa Phillips, the longtime director of the New Museum, will retire in April 2026, concluding a twenty-six-year tenure that reshaped the institution and coinciding with the public reopening of its newly expanded home on the Bowery.
Phillips, who has led the museum since 1999, will remain in her role through the reopening period before transitioning to Director Emeritus. An international search for her successor is set to begin this fall, the museum said.
Her departure comes at a moment of institutional consolidation rather than crisis. Under Phillips’ leadership, the New Museum evolved from a small experimental organization into a globally visible platform for contemporary art, anchored by its SANAA–designed flagship building and now expanded through a second structure designed by OMA.
Over more than two decades, Phillips oversaw dramatic growth in attendance, staffing, and programming, while establishing the museum as an early advocate for emerging artists, experimental formats, and interdisciplinary practice. She also launched initiatives such as NEW INC, the first museum-led cultural incubator, and integrated Rhizome into the institution’s ecosystem.
“The reopening of this expanded campus presents the ideal moment to pass the baton,” Phillips said, describing the transition as a handoff to a new generation of leadership rather than a withdrawal.
Her tenure was marked not only by expansion but by continuity: a sustained commitment to artists whose work challenged institutional norms long before they entered the mainstream. As the museum prepares to operate at double its former scale, the leadership change underscores a broader reality facing many contemporary art institutions—that architectural growth often necessitates generational renewal at the top.
Phillips is currently preparing an exhibition on the cultural history of the Bowery, scheduled to open next year, even as the museum turns toward its next chapter.
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