The New Museum reopened to the public on Saturday, March 21, 2026, ending a multi-year closure with a new seven-story building by the Dutch firm OMA that roughly doubles the institution’s footprint on the Bowery. The museum offered free admission over the opening weekend of March 21 and 22 and filled the enlarged building with its inaugural exhibition, New Humans: Memories of the Future.
The building
The addition rises next to the museum’s signature stack of off-kilter aluminum boxes — the 2007 SANAA building at 235 Bowery, which cost roughly $50 million when it opened. The new structure was designed by OMA, led by partner Shohei Shigematsu with founder Rem Koolhaas, in collaboration with executive architect Cooper Robertson.
Rather than reshaping the original’s much-imitated silhouette, OMA built vertically and internally beside it, knitting the two buildings together with new circulation. The project adds three elevators, an atrium stair and a reworked entrance plaza, along with additional gallery floors, an education center and space for public programs and artist-led initiatives. The museum says the work roughly doubles its total area.
‘New Humans: Memories of the Future’
The reopening show is a sprawling, essayistic survey organized by Massimiliano Gioni, the Edlis Neeson Artistic Director, with Kraus Family Senior Curator Gary Carrion-Murayari, Allen and Lola Goldring Curator Vivian Crockett and Senior Assistant Curator Madeline Weisburg.
New Humans spans three levels and gathers 732 individual objects by more than 200 artists, writers, scientists, architects and filmmakers from 56 countries. The exhibition traces how the figure of the “new human” — reinvented by technology, politics and biology — has recurred across a century of art and thought, from early-20th-century avant-gardes through robotics, science fiction and the present moment of artificial intelligence. It is less a single-medium art show than an argument assembled from art, ephemera, design and documents.
A leadership transition
The reopening also marks a turning point for the institution’s leadership. Lisa Phillips, who has served as the New Museum’s Toby Devan Lewis Director since 1999, is stepping down after more than a quarter-century at the helm — a tenure that includes both the SANAA building and the OMA expansion she steered to completion. The museum oversaw the project through a years-long capital campaign and a construction process that kept the institution dark on the Bowery while it built.
Why it matters
The New Museum is one of the few major New York art institutions devoted exclusively to contemporary and emerging work, and its physical growth reshapes the cultural geography of the Bowery and the Lower East Side gallery district around it. The expansion gives the museum room to mount larger and more ambitious shows year-round, and the scale of the inaugural exhibition — 732 objects across three floors — signals how the institution intends to use it. The building is now open, with New Humans on view as the first test of the new space.
Verification
- Reopening date (March 21, 2026), free opening weekend (March 21–22), and OMA expansion roughly doubling the museum’s size — New Museum building page and press materials: https://www.newmuseum.org/about/building/
- Architects (OMA, Shohei Shigematsu, Rem Koolhaas; executive architect Cooper Robertson), circulation features, and SANAA building (2007, ~$50M) — designboom coverage: https://www.designboom.com/architecture/new-museum-oma-expansion-march-2026-nyc-cooper-robertson-sanaa-01-13-2026/
- Inaugural exhibition title, “732 objects by more than 200 artists… from 56 countries,” three levels, and curators (Gioni, Carrion-Murayari, Crockett, Weisburg) — New Museum exhibition page: https://www.newmuseum.org/exhibition/new-humans-memories-of-the-future/
- Lisa Phillips as director since 1999, retiring after 27 years — designboom and Artnet reopening coverage: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/new-museum-expansion-2755313
Frequently Asked Questions
- When did the New Museum reopen?
- The New Museum reopened to the public on Saturday, March 21, 2026, after a multi-year construction closure, with free admission over its opening weekend of March 21 and 22.
- Who designed the new building?
- The seven-story addition was designed by OMA, led by partner Shohei Shigematsu with Rem Koolhaas, in collaboration with executive architect Cooper Robertson. It sits beside the museum's 2007 SANAA building at 235 Bowery.
- What is the inaugural exhibition?
- 'New Humans: Memories of the Future,' a thematic show curated by Massimiliano Gioni and a New Museum curatorial team, spanning three levels with 732 objects by more than 200 contributors from 56 countries.
- How much bigger is the museum now?
- The expansion roughly doubles the institution's total footprint, adding gallery space, an education center and improved circulation, including new elevators and an atrium stair, while preserving the stacked silhouette of the original SANAA building.