Massimiliano Gioni Named Director of New Museum
The institution’s former artistic director succeeds Lisa Phillips, who announced her retirement last fall.
After a 10-month search, the New Museum in Manhattan announced today that its artistic director of 12 years, Massimiliano Gioni, has been appointed as its next director. Gioni succeeds Lisa Phillips, the institution's second-ever director, who announced her retirement after 26 years at the museum last September.
With 20 years of experience and several title changes, Gioni not only co-established the New Museum Triennial, which launched in 2009, but has curated solo exhibitions for artists including Lynda Benglis, Judy Chicago, Theaster Gates, Hans Haacke, Nicole Eisenman, Faith Ringgold, Kahlil Joseph, Marta Minujin, Chris Ofili, and Raymond Pettibon. In 2021, Gioni helped realize the late Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor's vision for Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, a pivotal group exhibition centering Black grief and the impacts of white nationalism.
Gioni also debuted the New Museum's brand-new (and polarizing) OMA-designed expansion this year by curating New Humans: Memories of the Future, the gargantuan inaugural group exhibition analyzing the future of humanity as technology advances. He is also co-curating the largest museum survey of established video artist Arthur Jafa, which will open in late September.
Like his predecessor, Gioni has worked through some tumultuous periods in the New Museum’s history. Under the previous director, Phillips, unionized workers accused management of poor working conditions, unfair labor practices, and stalled contract negotiations.
Hailing from just outside of Milan, Gioni began his career at the Italian contemporary art magazine Flash Art in 2000, and was later dispatched to the United States as an editor. After striking a friendship with Maurizio Cattelan through an interview, Gioni entered the American curatorial sphere alongside the Italian artist and a fellow curator, Ali Subotnick, through the creation of The Wrong Gallery — a cheeky Chelsea doorway that functioned as New York City's smallest exhibition space from 2002 to 2005. He was also appointed as the artistic director of the Nicola Trussardi Foundation in Milan in 2002 — a position he still holds today.
In a Wall Street Journal feature, Phillips said that she hired Gioni as a curator in 2006 because “he can see the need of an institution from so many different angles, from the position of the artist, of his colleagues, of donors, and the general public.”
In addition to his extensive exhibition roster at the New Museum, Gioni has curated several international shows and biennials throughout his career. He was the youngest-ever curator tapped to organize the Venice Biennale in 2013, a milestone that followed his earlier work alongside Marta Kuzma for Manifesta 5 (2004), Cattelan and Subotnick for the fourth Berlin Biennale (2006), and for the eighth Gwangju Biennale (2010). However, while organizing an exhibition at the Nicola Trussardi Foundation for the Triennale di Milano in 2017, Gioni came under fire for the unauthorized inclusion of several video works by the Syrian filmmaker collective Abounaddara, which had rejected his earlier invitation to participate.
On top of his work at the Foundation, Gioni has also organized exhibitions at Museo Jumex in Mexico City, the Deste Foundation in Athens, and Qatar Museums in Doha.
“I think of this appointment less as a recognition of my work than a vote of confidence in our entire institution and its staff,” Gioni said in a press statement about his new role. “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.”
