The New Museum has introduced that its longtime creative director, Massimiliano Gioni, has been promoted to director of the New York establishment.
Gioni joined the museum in 2006 as a curator, later holding the roles of affiliate director and director of exhibitions. He succeeds Lisa Phillips, who introduced her retirement final yr after having spearheaded the establishment since 1999; she had succeeded its founder, Marcia Tucker, who opened the museum in 1977.
In an announcement to The Artwork Newspaper, Gioni identified that Phillips and Tucker had been additionally curators. “Earlier than changing into administrators of the New Museum, each of them had organised essential exhibits of their establishments, and continued to take action once they labored on the New Museum. So we’re very a lot persevering with in what’s a home custom at this level,” he mentioned.
Over the course of Gioni’s profession on the New Museum, he has overseen solo exhibitions devoted to artists together with John Akomfrah, Lynda Benglis, Judy Chicago, Tacita Dean, Nicole Eisenman, Urs Fischer, Theaster Gates, Carsten Höller, Ragnar Kjartansson, Kapwani Kiwanga, Raymond Pettibon, Religion Ringgold, Pipilotti Rist and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
Gioni has additionally organised a number of thematic exhibitions, together with the continued New People: Recollections of the Future—the inaugural present of the museum’s $82m enlargement, unveiled earlier this yr. The capital mission 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 enlargement, we’re nonetheless a purposefully scaled establishment: nimble, environment friendly, versatile. Which means on the New Museum, we will transfer quick and work intently throughout groups and departments, and stay near artwork and artists even when main the establishment,” Gioni’s assertion continues. “Legendary curator Harald Szeemann had a really efficient formulation to explain this strategy: ‘from imaginative and prescient to nail’. Having a curator as director permits a full understanding of the establishment and its priorities, and retains the establishment near its core mission, which finally is artwork, artists and their audiences.”
The just lately expanded New Museum Photograph: Jason O’Rear, courtesy the New Museum
In 2021, Gioni oversaw the landmark group exhibition Grief and Grievance: Artwork and Mourning in America, conceived by the late Okwui Enwezor and exploring mourning, loss and systemic violence towards Black People. In 2009, Gioni helped set up the New Museum Triennial with The Generational Triennial: Youthful Than Jesus, organised alongside the curators Lauren Cornell and Laura Hoptman.
Past the New Museum, Gioni has collaborated with numerous worldwide establishments just like the Deste Basis in Athens, Qatar Museums in Doha, the Lengthy Museum in Shanghai, Museo Jumex in Mexico Metropolis and the Nicola Trussardi Basis in Milan.
Gioni has organised quite a few worldwide exhibits and biennials, together with because the youngest curator ever of the fifty fifth Venice Biennale in 2013. Others have included the eighth Gwangju Biennale in 2010, the 4th Berlin Biennale in 2006 (co-curated along with his longtime collaborators, the artist Maurizio Cattelan and Ali Subotnick), and Manifesta in 2004 (co-curated with Marta Kuzma).
Within the mid-Nineteen Nineties, Gioni co-founded one of many first Italian digital artwork and tradition magazines, Trax, which featured writing by folks like Tracey Emin, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Kara Walker and David Foster Wallace. He later labored with the Italian journal Flash Artwork, changing into its US editor in 2003. Within the late Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, the prankster Cattelan famously enrolled Gioni to fake to be him in public appearances.
Gioni will start his new position on 1 August. James-Keith Brown, the New Museum’s board president, mentioned in an announcement that the appointment got here after “an intensive worldwide search” that lasted practically a yr, including that previously twenty years, Gioni has performed a vital position within the museum’s improvement. Brown calls Gioni a “visionary curator” who will “make an exemplary director”.
