Lisa Phillips (museum director)

Last updated

Lisa Phillips
Lisa Phillips New Museum Director Headshot.jpg
Lisa Phillips
Born
Manhattan, New York
Occupation(s) Director, curator, and author
TitleDirector of the New Museum of Contemporary Art
Parent Warren H. Phillips

Lisa Phillips is an American museum director, curator, and author. She is the Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, in New York City. In 1999, Phillips became the second director in the museum's history, succeeding founding director Marcia Tucker. [1] Prior to beginning her directorship at the New Museum, she worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art for twenty-three years. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Phillips was born in Manhattan, New York City, and grew up in Brooklyn Heights. Her father, Warren H. Phillips, is the former chairman and CEO of Dow Jones & Company. [3] She attended Packer Collegiate Institute and received her BA in Art History with honors from Middlebury College in 1975. She studied music, art, and art history in Vienna during her junior year and spent time at the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Albertina copying master drawings, there becoming interested in museums. She later entered the PhD program in Art History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where she studied with Linda Nochlin, Rosalind Krauss, and Leo Steinberg, and took courses at Hunter College's Art History program.

Career

The Whitney Museum of American Art

Phillips began her career as a Helena Rubinstein Fellow in the Whitney's Independent Study Program in 1976 and became a curator in 1982. During her twenty-two-years at the Whitney, she organized over thirty exhibitions, including the notable thematic exhibitions "The Third Dimension: Sculpture of the New York School” (1984); “High Styles: the History of American Design” (1985); “Image World: Art and Media Culture” (1989); “Beat Culture and the New America, 1950–1965” (1994); and “The American Century Part II: 1950–2000” (1999); midcareer surveys of works by Terry Winters (1986), Cindy Sherman (1987), Julian Schnabel (1987), and Richard Prince (1992); as well as a major retrospective of the work of Frederick Kiesler (1988). Known for championing midcareer and emerging artists, Phillips was also a curator for six Whitney Biennials (1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1993, and 1997).

New Museum

After joining the New Museum as Director in 1999, Phillips spearheaded and oversaw the successful completion of the museum's first freestanding building by the leading architectural team SANAA (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa), which opened on the Bowery in 2007. The building was also recognized when SANAA received the 2010 Pritzker Prize, making Kazuyo Sejima the second female architect to receive the prestigious award. The presence of the museum on the Bowery also spurred a renaissance of the street and neighborhood, including a new district for galleries and creative spaces. In 2008, Phillips led the acquisition of an adjacent fifty-thousand-square-foot property at 231 Bowery.

During her tenure, the museum's operating budget has expanded from $3.5 million to $13 million annually. Under Phillips's leadership, the museum expanded its programming to include several initiatives, including the TRIENNIAL for emerging international artists; the MUSEUM AS HUB, a partnership of international organizations to study and share art from around the globe; IdeasCity, an international festival that explores the art and culture of urban centers; and NEW INC, a museum-led incubator (a shared workspace and professional development program designed to support creative practitioners). The New Museum created a dedicated space for digital art projects in 2000 (Media Z Lounge), which subsequently led to bringing on RHIZOME] as an affiliate organization in 2003.

Phillips has also organized a number of benchmark exhibitions at the New Museum, including exhibitions of the works of Paul McCarthy (2001), Carroll Dunham (2002–03), John Waters (2004), and Chris Burden (2013–14). [1]

In 2003, the New York Times reported that Phillips was one of the candidates interviewed for the position as director of the Whitney Museum; the position eventually went to Adam D. Weinberg. [4]

Phillips has been running an art museum in New York longer than anyone except Glenn Lowry at the Museum of Modern Art (she took over in 1999, he in 1995.) She is one of only two directors in the city who has overseen the construction of a brand-new building. And she is now in the midst of an $80 million capital campaign to double her museum's size. [5]

Other activities

Phillips has served and continues to serve on several boards and advisory boards, including the Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Fulbright Fellowship Program, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (for which she was a trustee and executive committee member from 2002 to 2012), White Columns, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Azuero Earth Project, CIFO, the Frederick Kiesler Foundation, the Jay DeFeo Trust, and the Association of Art Museum Directors, where she is the chair of the Professional Issues Committee and works on the Futures Task Force.

She has consulted for several companies, including Peat Marwick, Chase Manhattan Bank and Goldman Sachs, and has held several education posts, including Visiting Critic at Yale University. In 2013, she helped lead a study of the gender-based compensation disparity among American museum directors, which received national attention.

Personal life

Phillips is married to Leon Falk [6] and has twin daughters. She lives in New York City.

Awards

Phillips was voted a top New Yorker by Time Out New York and New York Magazine and was the recipient of the Battery Park Conservancy's cultural medal of honor (2009); the StellaRe Prize, [7] Turin (2008); and the ArtTable Award of Distinction [8] (2011). She was named one of the "100 Most Influential Women in Business" by Crain's in 2007. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whitney Museum</span> Art museum in Lower Manhattan, New York City

The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum located in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. The institution was originally founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), a prominent American socialite, sculptor, and art patron after whom it is named.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of Modern Art</span> Art museum in Manhattan, New York City

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Museum</span> Museum in New York City

The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Ulrich Obrist</span> Swiss art curator, critic and historian (born 24/5/1968)

Hans Ulrich Obrist is a Swiss art curator, critic, and historian of art. He is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Obrist is the author of The Interview Project, an extensive ongoing project of interviews. He is also co-editor of the Cahiers d'Art review.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kazuyo Sejima</span> Japanese architect

Kazuyo Sejima is a Japanese architect and director of her own firm, Kazuyo Sejima & Associates. In 1995, she co-founded the firm SANAA. In 2010, Sejima was the second woman to receive the Pritzker Prize, which was awarded jointly with Nishizawa.

Public Art Fund is an independent, non-profit arts organization founded in 1977 by Doris C. Freedman. The organization presents contemporary art in New York City's public spaces through a series of highly visible artists' projects, new commissions, installations, and exhibitions that are emblematic of the organization's mission and innovative history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SANAA</span>

SANAA is an architectural firm based in Tokyo, Japan. It was founded in 1995 by architects Kazuyo Sejima (1956–) and Ryue Nishizawa (1966–), who were awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2010. Notable works include the Toledo Museum of Art's Glass Pavilion in Toledo, Ohio; the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York; the Rolex Learning Center at the EPFL in Lausanne; the Serpentine Pavilion in London; the Christian Dior Building in Omotesandō, Tokyo; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa; the Louvre-Lens Museum in France; and the Bocconi New Campus in Milan.

Deborah Kass is an American artist whose work explores the intersection of pop culture, art history, and the construction of self. Deborah Kass works in mixed media, and is most recognized for her paintings, prints, photography, sculptures and neon lighting installations. Kass's early work mimics and reworks signature styles of iconic male artists of the 20th century including Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, and Ed Ruscha. Kass's technique of appropriation is a critical commentary on the intersection of social power relations, identity politics, and the historically dominant position of male artists in the art world.

Ryue Nishizawa is a Japanese architect based in Tokyo. He is a graduate of Yokohama National University, and is director of his own firm, Office of Ryue Nishizawa, established in 1997. In 1995, he co-founded the firm SANAA with the architect Kazuyo Sejima. In 2010, he became the youngest recipient ever of the Pritzker Prize, together with Sejima.

Thelma Golden is the Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, United States. Golden joined the Museum as Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs in 2000 before succeeding Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims, the Museum's former Director and President, in 2005. She is noted as one of the originators of the term Post-Blackness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maxwell L. Anderson</span> Art museum director (born 1956)

Maxwell L. Anderson is an American art historian, former museum administrator, and non-profit executive, who currently serves as President of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation. Anderson previously served as Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1998 to 2003, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art from 2006 to 2011, and director of Dallas Museum of Art from 2011 to 2015.

Naomi Beckwith is the deputy director and chief curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She joined the museum in June 2021. Previously she had been the senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Beckwith joined the curatorial staff there in May 2011.

Luisa Lambri is an Italian artist working with photography and film, based in Milan. Her photographs are often based on architecture and abstraction.

Christine Y. Kim is an American curator of contemporary art. She is currently the Britton Family Curator-at-Large at Tate. Prior to this post, Kim held the position of Curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Before her appointment at LACMA in 2009, she was Associate Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem in New York. She is best known for her exhibitions of and publications on artists of color, diasporic and marginalized discourses, and 21st-century technology and artistic practices.

Merry Alpern is an American photographer whose work has been shown in museums and exhibitions around the country including the Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her most notable work is her 1993-94 series Dirty Windows, a controversial project in which she took photos of an illegal sex club through a bathroom window in Manhattan near Wall Street. In 1994, the National Endowment for the Arts rejected recommended photography fellowships to Alpern, as well as Barbara DeGenevieve and Andres Serrano. Merry Alpern became one of many artists assaulted by congressional conservatives trying to defund the National Endowment for the Arts because of this series. As a result, museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and San Francisco rushed to exhibit the series. She later produced and exhibited another series called Shopping which included images from hidden video cameras, taken in department stores, malls, and fitting rooms between 1997-99.

Lynn Zelevansky is an American art historian and curator. Formerly Henry Heinz II Director of the Carnegie Museum of Art, she is currently based in New York City. Zelevansky curated "Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama" (1998) and "Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form" (2004) for Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 1995 to 2009. While working at MoMA (1987-1995), she curated “Sense and Sensibility: Women Artists and Minimalism in the Nineties” (1994), that institution’s first all-female exhibition. AICA awarded it "Best Emerging Art Exhibition New York."

Yuko Hasegawa is the director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa and professor of curatorial and art theory at Tokyo University of the Arts.

Chrissie Iles is a British-American art curator, critic, and art historian. She is the Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

Jenny Schlenzka is a Berlin-born curator of time-based art, currently serving as Executive Artistic Director at Performance Space New York. Schlenzka was the first full-time curator dedicated to performance art at The Museum of Modern Art and established the Sunday Sessions program at MoMA PS1. In March 2023, she was selected to become the next director of Berlin's Martin-Gropius-Bau; her term will begin in September 2023.

Stacy C. Hollander is a scholar of American self-taught art and former American museum curator. She was the deputy director of curatorial affairs, chief curator, and director of exhibitions of the American Folk Art Museum. She also served as interim director of the museum in 2018.

References

  1. 1 2 "History: New Museum", New Museum, Retrieved November 23, 2014.
  2. Vogel, Carol. "A Top Curator Is Leaving The Whitney for SoHo Post", The New York Times, Retrieved November 23, 2014.
  3. "WEDDINGS; Lisa Phillips And Leon Falk". The New York Times. March 26, 1995. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved January 14, 2019.
  4. Carol Vogel (31 July 2003), Who Will Run Frick And the Whitney? New York Times .
  5. Kennedy, Randy (May 4, 2017). "The Most Powerful Woman in the New York Art World". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved March 17, 2018.
  6. "Weddings; Lisa Phillips And Leon Falk". The New York Times . March 26, 1995. Lisa Phillips, a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and Leon Falk, an independent film producer in Los Angeles, were married in New York on Monday. Rabbi Joseph H. Gelberman performed the ceremony at the Loeb Boathouse in Central Park.
  7. http://www.fsrr.org/fondazione-2/stellare-prize/?lang=en
  8. "ArtTable Honors Influential Women in the Visual Arts | Project Row Houses". Archived from the original on October 12, 2014. Retrieved October 7, 2014.
  9. "Ellen Alemany – Most Powerful Women in New York 2007 Gallery". June 21, 2011.

Further reading