A MUSEUM REBUILT—
AND A FUTURE REIMAGINED

A sprawling, provocative exhibition
where architecture and imagination collide

The New Museum in NYC

The New Museum has long been the edgy, slightly scruffy thinker of Manhattan’s museum scene. It’s been on the Bowery since 2007, backing under-the-radar artists and new trends inside the unmistakable building by SANAA—a pile of asymmetrically stacked boxes wrapped in aluminum mesh that cuts through the Lower East Side’s layered streetscape. After a two-year closure, the museum is now open, twice as big, with workers still hustling right up to the press preview.

The New Museum, NYC

Designed by Rem Koolhaas and Shohei Shigematsu of OMA, with executive architect Cooper Robertson, the expansion sits beside the original building, connecting internally while maintaining its own geometry. During the press conference, Director Lisa Phillips offered a brief history of the 50-year-old institution, underscoring the effort required to sustain it across its many locations. Shigematsu described the vision of a “cultural laboratory,” noting how the new horizontal structure offsets the original building’s vertical thrust. The new prismatic structure really steps in like a steadying hand, breaking up the vertical drama with a composed sideways gesture. What was once all upward ambition now feels a bit more grounded.

Precious Okoyomon, When the Lambs Rise Up Against the Bird of Prey, 2024. Silicone, stainless steel, wool, fabric, artificial hair and animatronics, 45 5/8 × 33 7/8 × 24 3/8 in (116 × 86 × 62 cm). Collection Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Courtesy Collection Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. © Precious Okoyomon. Photo: Benedetta Mascalchi

The new structure adds three floors of galleries, doubling exhibition space. Its façade—laminated glass panels layered with metal mesh—creates a translucent surface that complements the original tower. Inside, the transition between old and new is nearly imperceptible: the same concrete floors, the same industrial ceilings. An angled glass face pulls back from the curb, forming a small plaza, while a triangular atrium staircase draws light into the new wing and frames striking views of the Bowery—fitting for a museum so tied to the street’s pulse.

Both SANAA and OMA are Pritzker Prize–winning firms, and it’s rare to see a single museum become a conversation between two architectural heavyweights. But what about the art?

Anicka Yi, In Love with the World, 2021/2025. Plastic, helium, electronics, thermal camera, positioning system, artificial life simulation, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery Anicka Yi Studio: Remina Greenfield, Peter Pak, and Dylan Reitz-Cruz Technical Lead, Aerobe Behavior Design, and Development: Sitara Systems, Las Vegas Aerobes: Airstage, Riederich Real-time location system based on UWB technology: Pozyx, Ghent

The debut exhibition, New Humans: Memories of the Future, gathers more than 150 international artists, writers, scientists, architects, and filmmakers to rethink humanity in the age of technology. Works by Wangechi Mutu, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Alberto Giacometti, Hannah Höch, Constantin Brâncuși, Man Ray, and Francis Bacon (to name a few well-known artists) are placed in dialogue with artificial bodies, bots, unforgettable  floating squid-like creatures, a cute mouse weaving through a wall, a scary African statue, grotesque prosthetics, collages, video, early 20th-century prints—just about every medium imaginable.

Salvador Dalí, Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man, 1943. Oil on canvas, 18 × 20 1/2 in (45.72 × 52 cm). The Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, FL. Gift of A. Reynolds & Eleanor Morse, 2000.9

Artistic director Massimiliano Gioni fills the space with enough flavors to satisfy every kind of viewer. Even if neo-conceptual or post-medium work isn’t your thing, it’s hard to resist a creature designed by H. R. Giger for Alien, or Carlo Rambaldi’s original mechatronic model from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, complete with mechanical and electrical innards exposed. The show is wild, overwhelming, and absorbing—you could easily spend three hours wandering and still not see it all. Nor will you ever be bored.

Jana Euler, „ ” (body), 2016. Oil on canvas. 82 5/8 × 82 5/8 in (210 × 210 cm). Collection Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

The theme is also very current with all the AI slop going around that makes you doubt everything even more than you normally would; the fear of humanoid robots; Musk’s will to implant tiny devices in our brains; Thiel’s perpetual machine surveillance; and Zuckerberg pushing people into virtual worlds, among other dreads. Technology has always inspired both love and fear; artists today explore it much as their predecessors did in the past, with the same spirit of inquiry and awe but with a new set of tools, reimagining what life, nature, and even creativity might mean.

Daria Martin, Soft Materials, 2004 (still). 16mm film, color, sound; 10:30 min. Courtesy the artist. © Daria Martin

The expansion also introduces a larger lobby, a 74-seat theatre, artist-in-residence studios, an expanded store, and a full-service restaurant helmed by chef Julia Sherman, just in case existential reflection works up a craving for a glass of Pecorino wine and a well-composed salad.

It would be impossible to catalog the pieces that won me over, or didn’t. But I can guarantee that you will find work you won’t forget. Bring anyone of any age who still has a sense of curiosity and wonder–you don’t need to be an art expert. This is an exhibition that pulls you in simply by being strange, fascinating, engaging, and persistently thought-provoking.

Henrique Alvim Corrêa, one of 32 Illustrations for H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, published in 1906.

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

photos courtesy of the New Museum

New Humans: Memories of the Future
ongoing exhibit
New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York
(reopened to the public on Saturday, March 21, 2026)
open daily; hours vary
for tickets and information, visit New Museum

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦