Chronology
Explore the New Museum’s 40 year history of groundbreaking exhibitions, programs, collaborations, and many other institutional firsts on this ongoing interactive timeline.
The New Museum is founded by Marcia Tucker with support from founding Trustee Allen Goldring. Tucker and a small staff of volunteers start work at the New Museum, headquartered in an office in the Fine Arts Building, at 105 Hudson Street, on the first business day of 1977.
ORGANIZATIONAL
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First New Museum Staff:
A.C. Bryson
Susan Logan
Michiko Miyamoto
Allan Schwartzman
Marcia Tucker
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In July 1977, the New Museum moves into office quarters and an exhibition space at the Graduate Center of the New School for Social Research at 65 Fifth Avenue at 14th Street with the help of Trustee Vera List.
BUILDING INITIATIVE
The Semi-Permanent Collection is conceived with the intention of questioning institutional conventions of collecting. The Museum seeks to acquire at least one work from each major exhibition to be held for approximately a decade. After that time, works would be deaccessioned to make room for new works. The concept is never fully realized, and the Semi-Permanent Collection is suspended in 2001.
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December 16 1978 – February 10 1979
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The New Museum Education Program is established in the spring of 1980.
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The Minorities Dialogue Series is organized. It addressed the special concerns of early-career minority artists. New Museum staff and an inclusive group of emerging artists gather for informal, bimonthly meetings, each on cohosted by a staff member and one of the artist participants.
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The New: Jeff Koons
May 29 – June 26 1980
Richard Prince
September 26 – October 27 1980
John Ahearn
January 12 – February 11 1980
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In July 1983 with help from Trustee and Legal Counsel Herman Schwartzman, Board President Henry Luce III negotiates a donation of space in the landmark Astor Building at 583 Broadway in SoHo, to the New Museum.
On October 8, 1983, the Museum reopens at this new location with a preview of the exhibition Language Drama, Source, & Vision.
BUILDING INITIATIVE
The High School Art Program begins, offering semester-long series of museum, studio, and gallery visits, discussion with artists and critics, and writing projects to build and grow critical thinking and contemporary art knowledge in social contexts. HSAP utilizes classrooms across public schools in the city as their base instead of the museum gallery.
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On March 21, 1984, the Museum’s first docent class graduates after an intensive eight-week training program.
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Difference: On Representation and Sexuality
December 8 1984 – February 10 1985
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The SoHo Center Library is donated to the New Museum by Larry Aldrich in the fall of 1985. The library grows as a result of generous donations of art library collections from artists, critics, and others, eventually comprising over 48,000 volumes of artists’ monographs and books, art history and theory publications, exhibitions catalogues, periodicals, and more. The free, non-lending resource center is the only library in the US exclusively devoted to contemporary art and criticism. Regifted to the New York University Libraries in 2006, it currently resides there under the name of the New Museum Library.
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The Museum launches the Visible Knowledge Program, a signature educational and professional development program for public high schools. Taking a multicultural and interdisciplinary approach, the VKP pairs artist instructors with high school teachers on a semester-long basis, with the goal of integrating contemporary art with various curricula. The program runs for twenty-one years, ending in 2006 as part of a subsidiary program known as Re-Presenting Race in the Digital Age.
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The Multicultural Internship Program is established, offering full-time, paid internships throughout various departments of the Museum. The program runs through 1993.
EDUCATION
The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s
May 12 – August 19 1990
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The third and fourth books in the Documentary Sources in Contemporary Art series are published: Discourses: Conversations in Postmodern Art and Culture and Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures.
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The Astor Building is purchased and developed into luxury condominiums. The building is renamed the New Museum Building. Trustee Saul Dennison negotiates the acquisition of the second floor as part of a plan to increase the Museum’s exhibition and office spaces.
BUILDING INITIATIVE
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September 23 – December 31 1994
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October 1 1998 – January 3 1999
Xu Bing: Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy
October 8 1998 – January 10 1999
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The Media Lounge, New York’s first museum space dedicated to new media exhibitions is launched on November 16, 2000. Designed by LO-TEK, the architectural team of Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, the unique space inegrates art, technology, and architecture. The initial round of programming includes Candice Breitz: Babel Series and rhizome@newmuseum.org.
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July 26 – October 13 2002
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The New Museum purchases an empty lot at 235 Bowery, New York, and in December 2002 announces that it will construct its first freestanding permanent home.
BUILDING INITIATIVE
On May 15, the New Museum announces that Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, SANAA have been selected to design its new building. The designconsisting of stacked boxes shifting off a central coreis unveiled in November.
BUILDING INITIATIVE
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The New Museum inaugurates the Three M Project in collaboration with MCA Chicago and the Hammer Museum. Working collaboratively, the museums combine resources to commission and exhibit major projects by leading contemporary artists. Patty Chang, Fiona Tan, and Aernout Mik are awarded the first cycle of commissions.
INITIATIVE
Patty Chang: Shangri-La
July 8 – September 10 2005
Aernout Mik: Refraction
June 23 – September 10 2005
Fiona Tan: Correction
April 9 – June 4 2005
Global Classroom (G:Class), a new curriculum development program for schools and teens is instituted.
EDUCATION
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The Museum breaks ground for its new building at 235 Bowery in the fall.
BUILDING INITIATIVE
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Marcia Tucker dies of cancer at the age of sixty-six at her home in Santa Barbara on October 17, 2006. The lobby of the new building will be named in her honor.
PEOPLE
The New Museum opens its new 50,000 square foot building to the public on December 1, 2007, coinciding with the institution’s thirtieth anniversary. It is the first purpose-built art museum to be constructed from the ground up in downtown Manhattan.
The Museum opens its doors at 235 Bowery with the inaugural exhibition Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century, curated by Richard Flood, Massimiliano Gioni, and Laura Hoptman.
BUILDING INITIATIVE
Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century
December 1 2007 – March 30 2008
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December 1 2007 – January 27 2008
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Founded in 2006, and initiated by Anne Barlow, Museum as Hub launches its programs at the New Museum in December 2007 under the direction of Eungie Joo, Director and Curator of Education and Public Programs.
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February 11 – March 22 2009
In April 2009, the New Museum inaugurates an ongoing series of major triennials devoted to presenting works by early-career artists from around the world, and providing an important platform for a new generation of artists who shape the current discourse of contemporary art.
The first in the series, The Generational Triennial: Younger Than Jesus, contextualizes the different artistic approaches of a generation of artists born after 1976, and identifies emergent stylistic trends.
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The Generational Triennial: Younger Than Jesus
April 8 – June 14 2009
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Seven on Seven is founded by Lauren Cornell, Executive Director of Rhizome. It is an annual conference that pairs leaders in art with visionary technologists and challenges them to make something new.
The inaugural conference features Tauba Auerbach, Ayah Bdeir, Kristin Lucas, Andrew Kortina, Ryan Trecartin, and David Karp among others.
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October 6 2010 – January 9 2011
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IdeasCity Festival New York is the inaugural edition of the civic engagement initiative cofounded by Lisa Phillips and Karen Wong. This five day event features a cross-section of visionary leaders from the fields of art, architecture, technology, and government.
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The Ungovernables: 2012 New Museum Triennial
February 15 – April 22 2012
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First Look, an ongoing series of digital projects presented on the New Museum’s website, is launched by Lauren Cornell. Image Atlas by Taryn Simon and Aaron Swartz is the inaugural exhibition. In 2014 Rhizome begins to co-curate and co-present the series with the Museum.
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NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star
February 13 – May 26 2013
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The Museum’s Education Department establishes its Experimental Study Program (ESP) in the fall of 2013. It is a semester-long program for young people ages fifteen to twenty, and includes the Teen Apprentice Program, which offers students work experience and exposure to contemporary art and ideas.
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