New Museum Appoints  and Isabella Rjeille as Curators of the Sixth New Museum Triennial in 2026

Image: Left: Vivian Crockett, Photo: Ciara Elle Bryant; Right: Isabella Rjeille, Photo: Vans Bumbeers

Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum, and Massimiliano Gioni, Edlis Neeson Artistic Director, today announced that Vivian Crockett and Isabella Rjeille will curate the next edition of the New Museum Triennial opening in 2026. Crockett is Curator at the New Museum and Rjeille is Curator at Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) in São Paulo, Brazil. The sixth edition of the Triennial will be the first to take place following the completion of a major expansion of the New Museum designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas.

Launched in 2009, this signature New Museum initiative is the only recurring exhibition in the United States devoted to emerging artists from around the world, providing an important platform for young artists shaping the contemporary art discourse. The inaugural New Museum Triennial, “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus” (2009), was curated by Lauren Cornell, Massimiliano Gioni, and Laura Hoptman of the New Museum and focused on the emergence of a new millennial generation of artists, including Tauba Auerbach, Kerstin Braetsch, Cao Fei, Shilpa Gupta, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Tala Madani, and Adam Pendleton. The second Triennial, “The Ungovernables” (2012), curated by Eungie Joo of the New Museum, featured a range of artists and collectives from more than twenty-three countries, including Slavs and Tatars, Wu Tsang, Adrián Villar Rojas, Danh Vō, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. The third edition, “Surround Audience” (2015), curated by Lauren Cornell of the New Museum and artist Ryan Trecartin, himself an alumnus of the first New Museum Triennial, explored the effects of an increasingly connected world and featured artists including Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Ed Atkins, Frank Benson, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Juliana Huxtable, Josh Kline, and Martine Syms. The fourth edition, “Songs for Sabotage” (2018), curated by Gary Carrion-Murayari of the New Museum and Alex Gartenfeld of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, proposed a critical engagement with political and social structures and featured artists including Cian Dayrit, Janiva Ellis, Lydia Ourahmane, Dalton Paula, Wong Ping, and Diamond Stingily. The most recent Triennial, “Soft Water Hard Stone” (2021), curated by Margot Norton of the New Museum and Jamillah James of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, focused on artists re-envisioning established paradigms, including work by Gabriel Chaile, Cynthia Daignault, Jes Fan, Sandra Mujinga, Nickola Pottinger, and Rose Salane.

Lisa Phillips stated, “These two accomplished curators will bring a fresh perspective to the sixth edition of our signature program which is the only recurring exhibition in New York that spotlights a new generation of artists from around the globe.”

Massimiliano Gioni continued, “For the past 14 years, the New Museum Triennial has introduced to New York some of today’s most interesting artists from around the globe, and we are thrilled for Vivian Crockett and Isabella Rjeille to curate the first edition in our expanded building. Isabella is the first international curator to be part of the Triennial and brings a wealth of experience from MASP, one of the most exciting institutions for modern and contemporary art. Vivian has just co-curated the New Museum’s critically acclaimed Wangechi Mutu survey and is part of a new generation of curators shaping the conversation about art and culture at large. Together Isabella and Vivian make for a great team to explore the art of tomorrow.”

Vivian Crockett joined the New Museum as Curator in 2022. At the New Museum, she has curated “Doreen Lynette Garner: REVOLTED” (2022) and “Screen Series: Zahy Guajajara” (2022), co-curated the Museum’s landmark solo exhibition “Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined” (on view through June 4, 2023), and is currently organizing Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States. Before joining the New Museum, Crockett was the Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art, where she curated solo projects with Guadalupe Rosales and Jammie Holmes and developed a forthcoming Ja’Tovia Gary exhibition. Previously, she was a Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art and an Andrew W. Mellon Museum Research Consortium Fellow in the department of Media and Performance Art at The Museum of Modern Art. She previously worked as a research associate at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and as an independent curator with organizations including Visual AIDS, for whom she co-curated the 2017 “Day With(out) Art: Alternate Endings, Radical Beginnings.” A PhD candidate in art history at Columbia University, Crockett holds a BA in art history from Stanford University and an MA and MPhil in art history from Columbia.

Isabella Rjeille has been Curator at Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) since 2019. Rjeille joined MASP’s curatorial team in 2016 as Curatorial Assistant and in 2018 she was promoted to Assistant Curator as well as Head of the Editorial Department. At MASP, she has curated monographic and group exhibitions including “Cinthia Marcelle: por via das dúvidas” [By Means of Doubt] (2022), “Maria Martins: Desejo imaginante” [Tropical Fictions] (2021), “Histórias Feministas: artistas depois de 2000” [Feminist Histories: Artists After 2000] (2019), “Lucia Laguna: Vizinhança” [Neighborhood] (2018), and “Tracey Moffatt: Montagens” [Montages] (2017). She is currently working on a monographic exhibition on Melissa Cody opening at MASP in October 2023. Previously, Rjeille worked at the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo and served as Curatorial Assistant for the Thirty-Second Bienal de São Paulo, “Incerteza Viva” [Live Uncertainty], in 2016. She has also collaborated with artist-run spaces as well as autonomous cultural centers in São Paulo, such as Casa do Povo, where she served as editor of its publication Nossa Voz [Our Voice] from 2014 to 2020.