New Museum of Contemporary Art

Art & Culture

NYC’s Home for Contemporary Art

New Museum Exterior Lower East Side

About New Museum of Contemporary Art

 & why it made the Carpe City list

  • The New Museum is unlike most museums…there’s no permanent collection; the museum refreshes its collection every ten years so it’s truly contemporary.
  • That unique vision comes from Marcia Tucker, who founded the New Museum in 1977.
    • Tucker wanted to give the same attention to new work by contemporary, living artists that older works are afforded at traditional museums.
  • Given the museum’s devotion to all things “New,” Tucker saw the space as a “Laboratory.”
    • That’s true to this day: In addition to showcasing art, the New Museum hosts an incubator, New INC, which explores the connection between technology and contemporary art, and operates a think tank, Ideas City, where artists and urban planners consider the future of cities!
  • And the New Museum has a history of breaking ground, for example:
    • In 1980, The New Museum pioneered the High School Art Program, one of the first museum education programs in the US, to connect at-risk youth with contemporary art.
    • In 1982, the museum presented “Extended Sensibilities: Homosexual Presence in Contemporary Art,” the first exhibit to celebrate the contributions of gay and lesbian artists.
  • Speaking of breaking ground…
    • The museum will break ground on a brand new addition, adjacent to its current space, in 2020.
      • Rem Koolhaas’s architecture firm OMA designed the new space.

Carpe City Trivia

NYC's modern and contemporary art museum scene is all due to some extraordinary women

  • Marcia Tucker is not the only woman to found a museum in New York. In fact, virtually all of NYC’s modern and contemporary art museums were founded by women!
    • Abby Aldrich Rockefeller founded MoMA in 1929
    • Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney founded The Whitney in 1930
    • Hilla Von Rebay founded the Guggenheim in 1939
    • Aileen Osborn Web founded the Museum of Art and Design in 1956

By: Lucie Levine
Photography by:

Anne Crays

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