New Museum

The New Museum was founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, a former curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art who had been dismissed from her position after organizing a controversial exhibition. Seeking to break away from the rigid structures of established institutions, she created a space dedicated entirely to the art and ideas of the present moment. Tucker operated on a radical, experimental philosophy, famously advising that one should act first and think later, which ensured that the museum remained a testing ground for living artists rather than a repository for established history.