Massimiliano Gioni Appointed Director of the New Museum

Massimiliano Gioni has been appointed the next Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum, New York. Gioni, who joined the institution as Curator in 2006, and had been its Edlis Neeson Artistic Director since 2014 — a role in which he led the curatorial team and was responsible for the exhibition program — takes up his new position on August 1, 2026. Following an international selection process, the Italian-born Gioni becomes the museum’s third Director, in succession to its founder Marcia Tucker, Director from 1977 to 1999, and her successor Lisa Phillips, who retired as Director in April 2026.

“It is a tremendous honor to be asked to lead the New Museum, following in the steps of giants like Marcia Tucker and Lisa Phillips,” Gioni said in a press statement. “I am grateful to the Board of Trustees, the selection committee, and James-Keith Brown, our Board President, for entrusting me with both the illustrious legacy of the institution and the tools to shape an exciting future ahead.”

“I am grateful to the many artists, colleagues, and supporters who together have built the New Museum into the globally respected and beloved institution that we are so proud to call home.”

— Massimilano Gioni

The New Museum, the only museum in New York dedicated solely to contemporary art, is a kunsthalle, with no permanent collection — allowing it to devote energy to production that collecting institutions necessarily have to dedicate to preservation. During Gioni’s time as Artistic Director, it has cemented its reputation for holding single-artist exhibitions — in September 2026 it is due to host the largest survey to date of the work of Arthur Jafa — and ambitious themed shows with societal resonance.

Gioni takes the lead at an institution which, following its reopening on March 21, 2026 — with a new seven-storey extension designed by OMA’s Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas — has become the permanent home for the first time to Rhizome, the museum’s digital arm since 2003, and New Inc, its incubator for art, design, and technology, launched in 2014.

Gioni recently oversaw the exhibition “New Humans: Memories of the Future”, the first show to occupy the whole of the New Museum’s expanded building following its reopening. “New Humans”, which explores artists’ concern with what it means to be human in the face of technological change, features 15 exhibition commissions and includes the work of 200 artists, historical, modern and contemporary, including Rebecca Allen, Meriem Bennani, Cao Fei, Pierre Huyghe, Tatsuo Ikeda, Tau Lewis, Precious Okoyomon, Pamela Rosenkranz, Hito Steyerl, and Anicka Yi. 

In an interview with Right Click Save published in February 2026, Gioni spoke of what the New Museum’s ambitions had been when it embarked on a rebuilding program in 2020 that gave the museum an additional 10,000 square feet of exhibition space:

“We wanted this expansion to feel and to be truly necessary [… ] We also wanted to make sure that [in] doubling the [exhibition] space, we remained an extremely flexible, experimental, nimble institution.”

— Massimilano Gioni

He also described what it meant to the museum to reopen on the crest of an institutional wave: one that started at the end of 2025 with the reopening of the Studio Museum in Harlem and the new Princeton University Art Museum building, and which has continued in 2026 with the opening of NODE in Silicon Valley; the Geffen Wing at Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the public arts program at the Stephen A Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities at Oxford University; and Refik Anadol’s Dataland Museum of AI Arts — with Canyon due to open in downtown New York later in the year. 

“It forces us to understand that art [cannot] just be entertainment or financial investment,” Gioni said. “I think it reminds us every day that what we do is important and it can be a tool for understanding the world outside the museum … Maybe this new wave [....signals] that museums are here to stay and they play a vital role in many cities.

“Though many are still struggling with attendance, I think museums are places of encounter, places of discovery, and learning. We seem to be necessary and that is, I think, encouraging and exciting.”

— Massimilano Gioni

Besides his two-decade career at New Museum — during which he has overseen international exhibitions and collaborations in cities including Milan, Beirut, London, Shanghai, Washington DC, and Doha, Qatar — Gioni has organised numerous international exhibitions and biennials including Manifesta 5 (2004, co-curated with Marta Kuzma), the 4th Berlin Biennale (2006, co-curated with Maurizio Cattelan and Ali Subotnick), the 8th Gwangju Biennale (2010), and the 55th Venice Biennale (2013)

 James-Keith Brown described Gioni in a press statement as “an ideal leader to take the New Museum into a new era in our newly expanded campus”. “Massimiliano is a visionary curator and will make an exemplary director,” Brown said, “embodying what [...] Marcia Tucker, once described as ‘a truly great person with a profound curiosity about the world and the people in it, an interest that encompasses everything and everyone’.”