NEW YORK, NY.- Following the New Museum’s 2018 Triennial exhibition, “Songs for Sabotage,” Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director, and Massimiliano Gioni, Edlis Neeson Artistic Director, announced today that Margot Norton and Jamillah James will curate the fifth New Museum Triennial exhibition, set to open in 2021. Norton is Curator at the New Museum, while James is Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA).

Launched in 2009, the critically acclaimed Triennial is a signature initiative of the New Museum and is the only recurring international exhibition in the US devoted to emerging artists from around the world, providing an important platform for young artists who are shaping the current discourse of contemporary art and the future of culture. The Triennial series began in 2009 with “Younger Than Jesus,” an exhibition focused on the emergence of a new millennial generation of artists, including figures such as Cory Arcangel, Tauba Auerbach, Kerstin Brätsch, Cao Fei, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Cyprien Gaillard, Elad Lassry, Adam Pendleton, Josh Smith, and Ryan Trecartin. The second Triennial, “The Ungovernables” (2012), curated by Eungie Joo of the New Museum, was global in scope, featuring a range of artists, artist groups, 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, explored the effects of an increasingly connected world, and featured artists Ed Atkins, Frank Benson, DIS, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Juliana Huxtable, Josh Kline, Martine Syms, and Luke Willis Thompson. The most recent edition, “Songs for Sabotage,” on view from February to May 2018, proposed a critical engagement with the political and social structures of the day, and was curated by Gary Carrion-Murayari of the New Museum and Alex Gartenfeld of the ICA, Miami.

Lisa Phillips states: “The New Museum Triennial has established itself as a distinctive exhibition that identifies an emerging generation of talent while exploring some of the most timely and urgent issues of today.”

Massimiliano Gioni states: “We are excited about this new bicoastal pairing of curators. Both Norton and James have consistently been committed to supporting and exhibiting emerging artists, and have an extraordinary track record in identifying the most interesting artists at work today. I look forward to the new perspective they will bring to the New Museum Triennial, while continuing to expand its relevance and polemical thrust."

Margot Norton is Curator at the New Museum. She joined the Museum in 2011 as Assistant Curator, and in the past seven years has worked on a number of exhibitions, curating and co-curating presentations by Judith Bernstein, Pia Camil, Sarah Charlesworth, Roberto Cuoghi, Ragnar Kjartansson, Chris Ofili, Goshka Macuga, Nathaniel Mellors, Laure Prouvost, Pipilotti Rist, Anri Sala, Kaari Upson, and Erika Vogt. She was named Associate Curator in 2015, and Curator in 2017. Norton has helped shape the Museum’s exhibition program and has played an important role in the organization, research, and execution of significant group exhibitions including “The Keeper,” “Here and Elsewhere,” and “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star.” Norton is currently working on the first American survey of Sarah Lucas, opening September 26, 2018 at the New Museum. Before joining the New Museum, Norton was a curatorial assistant at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In October 2017, she curated “Sequences VIII: Elastic Hours,” the eighth Sequences Real Time Art Festival in Reykjavik, Iceland. She has contributed to and edited numerous publications and exhibition catalogues, and regularly lectures on contemporary art and curating. She holds a MA in Curatorial Studies from Columbia University, New York.

Jamillah James is Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA). Previously, she held curatorial positions at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, working in collaboration with the nonprofit Art + Practice; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Queens Museum, New York. James has also independently organized many exhibitions, performances, screenings, and public programs at alternative and artist-run spaces throughout the US and Canada since 2004. Recent exhibitions include solo presentations of Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Sarah Cain, Alex Da Corte, Abigail DeVille, Rafa Esparza, Simone Leigh, and Michele O’Marah. James is currently working on major solo exhibitions of B. Wurtz and Nayland Blake, artist projects with Maryam Jafri and Lucas Blalock, as well as the group exhibition “The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies 1970-Present.” She has contributed texts to Artforum, The International Review of African American Art, and various institutional exhibition catalogues, most recently on artists Diamond Stingily, Barbara Hammer, and Nina Chanel Abney. James regularly lectures on contemporary art, curating, and professional development for emerging artists, and is a visiting critic in the graduate department at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena.