The New Museum announced that Tschabalala Self (b. 1990, Harlem, New York; lives and works in Hudson Valley, New York) will create a new sculpture for the building’s facade to be unveiled in fall 2025.
Self’s first large-scale public sculpture in New York will be part of the Museum’s longstanding Facade Sculpture Program made possible through the support of the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, and it will open in tandem with the completion of the OMA-designed expansion of the New Museum.
Critically engaged in questions surrounding figuration, Tschabalala Self has built a singular style from the syncretic use of painting, printmaking, and sculpture to construct her subjects. Self, whose work was included in the New Museum’s 2017 exhibition Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon, traverses different artistic and craft traditions to explore questions of selfhood and human flourishing. Her work for the New Museum’s facade entitled Art Lovers depicts a romantic scene of a couple embracing, playfully nodding to the architectural “kiss point” where the existing SANAA-designed building meets the OMA-designed expansion. Installed on the exterior of the Museum’s third floor, Self’s work will be visible down Bowery and Prince Street, offering viewers a contemporary portrait of New York City life and the personal connections enabled by public spaces like museums.
“As we look forward to opening the New Museum’s expanded campus on the Bowery, we are delighted that Tschabalala Self’s sculpture for the facade pays homage to the joining of our SANAA building with our new OMA-designed expansion,” said Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum.
“We are thrilled to collaborate again with Tschabalala Self, who has been a friend of the New Museum for many years. Her sculpture is like a giant lapel pin placed on our facade: an insignia of love that we can’t wait to share with New York and visitors from around the globe as we open our expanded museum,” said Massimiliano Gioni, Edlis Neeson Artistic Director of the New Museum.
Self's is the latest work to be created as part of the New Museum’s ongoing Facade Sculpture Program, inaugurated with the Museum’s opening on the Bowery in 2007. She follows artists Chris Burden, Isa Genzken, Glenn Ligon, and Ugo Rondinone, all of whom have presented large-scale sculptural works on the New Museum’s facade.
Art Lovers will go on view in fall 2025, opening in tandem with New Humans: Memories of the Future, an exhibition spanning the entirety of the New Museum bringing together more than 150 international artists from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to explore how technological changes have spurred shifting definitions of the “human.” Additional site-specific works opening in fall 2025 include a sculpture created by Sarah Lucas for the Museum’s new public plaza at Bowery and Prince St., and a commission by Klára Hosnedlová created for the new Atrium Stair in the OMA building.
Anna Melnykova, "Palace of Labor (palats praci), architector I. Pretro, 1916", shot with analog Canon camera, 35 mm Fuji film in March 2022.
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