MoMA PS1 Celebrates 50th Anniversary with Free Admission for All, Signature Greater New York Exhibition, Summer Music Series Warm Up, Hard Art, and More

MoMA PS1 in Queens, New York. Image courtesy MoMA PS1. Photo: Noel Woodford

Today, MoMA PS1 announced a full slate of programming and celebrations for its 50th anniversary year. To kick off the anniversary, last month the museum removed financial barriers to entry by launching free admission for all visitors, becoming the largest free museum in New York City. Hallmark anniversary programming includes the much-anticipated sixth edition of Greater New York, PS1’s signature survey of New York artists, which will span the entirety of the building beginning April 16, 2026.

A large-scale public celebration of MoMA PS1’s 50th Anniversary will take place on April 18, the opening weekend of Greater New York, featuring family programs, activations by community partners, local food vendors, and more. Additional programming in PS1’s anniversary year also includes a major outdoor commission by Precious Okoyomon in the courtyard, a historic survey of Black artists working in abstraction, an archival exhibition examining the history of fashion at PS1, a publication on the museum’s Homeroom program, and the first US survey of Teresa Margolles, organized with The Museum of Modern Art. The anniversary year also includes a special season of Warm Up, the museum’s signature summer music series, and the 50th Anniversary Gala honoring founder Alanna Heiss and former MoMA Director Glenn Lowry.

GREATER NEW YORK 2026

April 16–August 17, 2026

Performance Program: May 2, May 30, June 27

Spanning the entirety of the building, PS1’s signature survey of artists living and working in the New York City area returns for its sixth edition, coinciding with the museum’s 50th anniversary. Greater New York 2026 brings into focus over 50 multidisciplinary artists in the formative years of their careers. This highly anticipated iteration will encompass site-specific commissions, new productions, and performances, alongside important recent works that address today’s most urgent cultural concerns. Organized for the first time by MoMA PS1’s full curatorial team, the exhibition emphasizes the forces that shape daily life in the city today, as well as strategies of resistance and adaptation in the face of increased surveillance, economic precarity, and shifting technologies. Greater New York 2026 registers an optimism and anxiety generated through artists’ attention to the layered, lived textures of New York City. A ticketed party celebrating the artists will be held on the evening of April 24, featuring live music and DJ sets.

50th ANNIVERSARY BLOCK PARTY

April 18, 2026

Held during the opening weekend of Greater New York, the 50th-Anniversary Block Party will feature activations by community partners, family activities, local food vendors, and music sets across the museum’s public plaza, courtyard, and galleries.

50TH ANNIVERSARY GALA

May 12, 2026

MoMA PS1’s 50th Anniversary Gala honors Alanna Heiss, founder, and Glenn D. Lowry, former David Rockefeller Director of The Museum of Modern Art. The host committee for the event is made up of artists from across the museum’s 50-year history, including Cecily Brown, Mary Heilmann, Ralph Lemon, Glenn Ligon, Julie Mehretu, Precious Okoyomon, Martin Puryear, Alan Saret, and Hank Willis Thomas.

COURTYARD COMMISSION: PRECIOUS OKOYOMON

Summer 2026–Summer 2028

The Courtyard Commission series is a major new program that invites an artist to transform the museum’s courtyard for a period of two years. For the inaugural Courtyard Commission, Precious Okoyomon (Nigerian-American, b. 1993) will produce a living forest featuring a large-scale, interactive bear sculpture—the artist’s signature motif—which resembles an oversized children’s toy. The forest, developed in collaboration with the nursery issima, will grow into an ever-morphing woodland of trees, exotic flowers, weeds, and boulders. Visitors are invited to venture into the bear’s body, where they can experience a multi-sensory installation before exiting through its mouth.

WARM UP

Summer 2026

The 50th-anniversary edition of Warm Up features expanded musical acts that nod to three decades of the program, the longest running music series in a museum. Since 1998, Warm Up has presented experimental and avant-garde music that forms an integral part of PS1’s multidisciplinary programming across under-known subcultures, scenes, and communities. An influential series that amplifies emerging and legendary performers alike, Warm Up has presented renowned DJs and producers such as Honey Dijon, SOPHIE, DJ Spooky, Yasunao Tone, Easyfun, Arca, and Crystallmess. Today, the program foregrounds international and diasporic perspectives within emergent generations of experimental and club music. Building on the growing resurgence of nightlife genres, the series also contextualizes historic figures and regional sounds for new audiences. Warm Up offers an environment for unique encounters between local and international art and music audiences within the setting of a premiere cultural institution. Additionally, a host committee of five artists, musicians, and writers active across New York City’s club and independent music ecosystems will be announced.

PRINTED MATTER’S NY ART BOOK FAIR

September 24–27, 2026

Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair (NYABF) is a beloved celebration of artists’ books. Celebrating the 50th anniversaries of both MoMA PS1 and Printed Matter, NYABF 2026 will feature interdisciplinary artists, collectives, small presses, self-publishing artists, rare book dealers, institutions, and distributors. The 2025 NY Art Book Fair marked a long-awaited return to MoMA PS1, where it was held from 2009 to 2019, a pivotal decade that established NYABF as a cornerstone for the distribution of artists’ books and the preeminent gathering place to celebrate the form. NYABF also offers a discursive platform for engagement in the field of artists’ book publishing through book launches, lectures, exhibitions, discussions, performances, and workshops.

TERESA MARGOLLES

Fall 2026–Winter 2027

In a collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1 will present the first US survey of artist Teresa Margolles (Mexican, b. 1963), including major installations and new work. The exhibition comprises large-scale sculptures, photographs, and video made over the past three decades throughout the museum’s expansive third-floor galleries. Trained as a forensic pathologist, Margolles has created a distinctive body of work that examines, with both compassion and rage, the implications of transnational violence, with particular attention to the US-Mexico border. Across media, her works focus on the traces of displacement, gender violence, and societal neglect. Through her long-term forensic research projects, minimalist vocabulary, and engagement with vulnerable communities, Margolles has coined a singular artistic language.

FASHION ARCHIVE AND HISTORY AT PS1

Fall 2026–Winter 2027

Building on its multidisciplinary history, MoMA PS1 will present an exhibition that draws on archival material from the museum’s fashion program, which began in the late 1970s.

HARD ART

November 5, 2026–March 2027

The fall season is headlined by Hard Art, an exhibition exploring the history of engagement with abstraction by Black artists. Featuring work from the 1970s through the present by over 40 artists, the show builds on the historic exhibition Afro-American Abstraction, curated by April Kingsley at PS1 in 1980. Hard Art inserts more conceptually driven practices engaged with abstraction—often incorporating sculpture, video, or sound—into a history largely dominated by painting and the legacy of modernism. Its title derives from Bradley’s description of The DeLuxe Show, which leveraged abstraction’s perceived opacity and complexity as a prompt for deepened engagement with art. Organized thematically, Hard Art traces the legacy of artists such as Bowling, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Ed Clark, Sam Gilliam, and Suzanne Jackson, juxtaposed with new and recent works by Torkwase Dyson, Nikita Gale, Rindon Johnson, Andy Robert, Carolyn Lazard, and SoiL Thornton. Together, these cross generational conversations emphasize the enduring relevance and increasing urgency of abstraction in shaping the current political imaginary.

HOMEROOM: ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB

Fall 2026–Winter 2027

Artists Against the Bomb (AATB), an international artistic campaign advocating for universal nuclear disarmament, will present an exhibition in Homeroom. Rooted in an urgent belief that meaningful change arises through collective action and public refusal, instead of solutions from the top, AATB’s calls to action span posters, design, film, photography, literature, music, sculpture, and ephemera. Organized by Estudio Pedro Reyes and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, the presentation in Homeroom will highlight contributions by artists with ties to MoMA PS1—including Regina José Galindo, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, and Keith Haring—alongside newly commissioned works.

ABOUT MoMA PS1

MoMA PS1 champions art and artists at the intersection of the social, cultural, and political issues of our time. Providing audiences with the agency to ask questions, access to knowledge, and a forum for public debate, PS1 has offered insight into artists’ diverse worldviews for more than 40 years. Founded in 1976, the institution was a defining force in the alternative space movement in New York City, transforming a nineteenth century public schoolhouse in Long Island City into a site for artistic experimentation and creativity. PS1 has been a member of New York City’s Cultural Institutions Group (CIG) since 1982 and affiliated with The Museum of Modern Art since 2000.

Hours: MoMA PS1 is open from 12 to 6 p.m. Thursday, Friday, Sunday, and Monday, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays. Closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day.

Admission: MoMA PS1 is a place for everyone. Free admission is made possible by Sonya Yu. Tickets may be reserved online at mo.ma/ps1tickets.

Visitor Guide: Discover even more from MoMA PS1 with the Bloomberg Connects app. Read wall text, hear directly from artists, and uncover the building’s history with this multimedia visitor guide. This digital experience is made possible through the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Directions: MoMA PS1 is located at 22-25 Jackson Avenue at 46th Ave in Long Island City, Queens, across the Queensboro Bridge from midtown Manhattan. Traveling by subway, take the E, M, or 7 to Court Sq; or the G to Court Sq or 21 St Van Alst. By bus, take the Q67 to Jackson and 46th Ave or the B62 to 46th Ave.

Information: For general inquiries, call (718) 784-2084 or visit momaps1.org.