New Museum Announces Star-Studded Lineups For 40th Anniversary and Triennial

As New Museum preps for its expansion, it’s also celebrating its 40th anniversary with a series of conversations between some of the artists who’ve shown there since it was founded as part of the New School in 1977.

Tickets for Who’s Afraid of the New Now?, on Dec. 2 and 3, went on sale today. For just five bucks, you’ll be able to hear Raymond Pettibon, who was honored with a retrospective back in February, speak to Kaari Upson, the Los Angeles artist whose work was shown this summer. We’d say that’s worth the price of admission, given Pettibon makes very few of these appearances, with the notable exception of his appearance with Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon at Strand. (Be warned: Vice found that one “fucking depressing”.) Oh, and admission to the museum’s current exhibits, such as “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon,” will be free throughout the weekend.

Among the other notable artists who will be participating in dialogues about their practice and the museum are Jeff Koons (maybe he’ll reveal more about his dream project?); Paweł Althamer, the Polish artist who brought a stunning show to the museum in 2014; famed provocateur Paul McCarthy; famed portraitist Elizabeth Peyton; and Carroll (mother of Lena) Dunham.

McCarthy, Peyton, and Dunham received major surveys at New Museum after Lisa Phillips took over as the museum’s director in 1999. Phillips is the second director after Marcia Tucker, the former Whitney curator who founded New Museum inside of the New School in 1977. It moved to Soho in 1983 and Chelsea in 2004 before settling into its current digs at 235 Bowery in 2007.

Check out the lineup of Saturday talks here and the Sunday lineup here.

Also coming up is New Museum’s fourth Triennial. “Songs for Sabotage” will take over the Bowery building’s four floors from February 13 to May 27 and feature new and recent work from 30 artists hailing from 19 countries. According to a press release, the artists, most of them showing in the U.S. for the first time, “offer models for dismantling and replacing the political and economic networks that envelop today’s global youth. Invoking the heightened role of identity in today’s culture, they take on the technological, economic, and material structures that stand in the way of collectivity.” See the Triennial’s lineup here.