New Museum, one of the first contemporary art museums established in New York since the Second World War, partners with fashion house DKNY to support exhibitions by five women artists this coming year.
the art institution
The partnership, entitled The New Women’s Project, amplifies the art institution’s longstanding and ongoing advocacy for women artists as a hallmark of its mission over the past 38 years. The collaboration between the fashion house and the museum is appropriate considering that both were founded by women. Donna Karan founded DKNY in the 1980s while Marcia Tucker founded New Museum on January 1, 1977. As its first director, Tucker had a vision to make New Museum an avenue to present, study, and interpret contemporary art. Lisa Phillips succeeded Tucker as the Museum’s second director in 1999, and it was Philips who ushered the institution into its next phase of growth with programmatic expansion and the inauguration of its first freestanding building on the Bowery in 2007.
“The New Museum has always explored the future of culture through the art of today, giving first major museum exposure in the US to a diverse array of artists, including Ana Mendieta, Adrian Piper, Andrea Zittel, Martha Rosler, Elizabeth Peyton, Rosemarie Trockel, Tacita Dean, Nathalie Djurberg, Camille Henrot, and Klara Lidén, among many others,” says current director Lisa Phillips.
“Advocating for women artists has always been a natural part of our organization’s defining culture. We are grateful that DKNY’s partnership will help bring continuing recognition and attention to the extraordinary contributions of women at the forefront of contemporary art,” she adds.
This year, DKNY will serve as the lead sponsor of the New Museum’s spring exhibitions, featuring the first New York museum solo exhibitions by artists Nicole Eisenman, Goshka Macuga, Cally Spooner, Andra Ursuta, and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, overseen by Artistic Director Massimiliano Gioni.
“This is the second time that the New Museum has presented a lineup of solo shows by women,” says Massimiliano Gioni. “When we planned these exhibitions, we simply sought to celebrate some of the greatest artists of today, regardless of their gender, and yet our choices attracted attention. Clearly there are still glass ceilings to be shattered, and we are thrilled to continue to do so with DKNY’s partnership.”
According to DKNY’s new creative directors’ Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne, The New Women’s Project is particularly important to DKNY’s mission. DKNY has always stood for strong, intelligent, and modern woman, and New Museum’s is dedicated in the same cause. “Being able to magnify the New Museum’s ethos and support a forward-looking, dynamic New York institution is an honor,” shares Chow and Osborne.
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