The New Museum has announced that its longtime artistic director, Massimiliano Gioni, has been promoted to director of the New York institution.
Gioni joined the museum in 2006 as a curator, later holding the roles of associate director and director of exhibitions. He succeeds Lisa Phillips, who announced her retirement last year after having spearheaded the institution since 1999; she had succeeded its founder, Marcia Tucker, who opened the museum in 1977.
In a statement to The Art Newspaper, Gioni pointed out that Phillips and Tucker were also curators. “Before becoming directors of the New Museum, both of them had organised important shows in their institutions, and continued to do so when they worked at the New Museum. So we are very much continuing in what is a house tradition at this point,” he said.
Over the course of Gioni’s career at the New Museum, he has overseen solo exhibitions dedicated to artists including John Akomfrah, Lynda Benglis, Judy Chicago, Tacita Dean, Nicole Eisenman, Urs Fischer, Theaster Gates, Carsten Höller, Ragnar Kjartansson, Kapwani Kiwanga, Raymond Pettibon, Faith Ringgold, Pipilotti Rist and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
Gioni has also organised several thematic exhibitions, including the ongoing New Humans: Memories of the Future—the inaugural show of the museum’s $82m expansion, unveiled earlier this year. The capital project was designed by OMA’s Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas, in collaboration with Cooper Robertson, and added 60,000 sq. ft to the museum—doubling its footprint to 120,000 sq. ft.
“Even after the expansion, we are still a purposefully scaled institution: nimble, efficient, flexible. This means that at the New Museum, we can move fast and work closely across teams and departments, and remain close to art and artists even when leading the institution,” Gioni’s statement continues. “Legendary curator Harald Szeemann had a very effective formula to describe this approach: ‘from vision to nail’. Having a curator as director allows a full understanding of the institution and its priorities, and keeps the institution close to its core mission, which ultimately is art, artists and their audiences.”
The recently expanded New Museum Photo: Jason O’Rear, courtesy the New Museum
In 2021, Gioni oversaw the landmark group exhibition Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, conceived by the late Okwui Enwezor and exploring mourning, loss and systemic violence against Black Americans. In 2009, Gioni helped establish the New Museum Triennial with The Generational Triennial: Younger Than Jesus, organised alongside the curators Lauren Cornell and Laura Hoptman.
Beyond the New Museum, Gioni has collaborated with various international institutions like the Deste Foundation in Athens, Qatar Museums in Doha, the Long Museum in Shanghai, Museo Jumex in Mexico City and the Nicola Trussardi Foundation in Milan.
Gioni has organised numerous international shows and biennials, including as the youngest curator ever of the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. Others have included the 8th Gwangju Biennale in 2010, the 4th Berlin Biennale in 2006 (co-curated with his longtime collaborators, the artist Maurizio Cattelan and Ali Subotnick), and Manifesta in 2004 (co-curated with Marta Kuzma).
In the mid-1990s, Gioni co-founded one of the first Italian digital art and culture magazines, Trax, which featured writing by people like Tracey Emin, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Kara Walker and David Foster Wallace. He later worked with the Italian magazine Flash Art, becoming its US editor in 2003. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the prankster Cattelan famously enrolled Gioni to pretend to be him in public appearances.
Gioni will begin his new role on 1 August. James-Keith Brown, the New Museum’s board president, said in a statement that the appointment came after “an extensive international search” that lasted nearly a year, adding that in the past two decades, Gioni has played an essential role in the museum’s development. Brown calls Gioni a “visionary curator” who will “make an exemplary director”.
