The New Museum’s inaugural commission for its new public plaza on the Bowery was unveiled on Tuesday (12 May), with Sarah Lucas’s ecstatic sculpture VENUS VICTORIA (2026) leaping into the breach. The British artist’s sculpture is a typically playful riff on a classic reclining nude. It features a pink-hued figure in yellow high heels straddling a giant cast-concrete washing machine.
Lucas’s proposal for the site at the foot of the New Museum’s OMA-designed, recently opened Toby Devan Lewis Building was selected by an all-artist jury that included Teresita Fernández, Joan Jonas, Julie Mehretu, Cindy Sherman and Kiki Smith. It will remain on view at the intersection of Bowery and Prince Street for two years, after which another commission by a woman artist will take its place. For now, Lucas's sculpture makes a nice pairing with Tschabalala Self's monumental commission for the New Museum's façade, Art Lovers (2025).
Sarah Lucas, VENUS VICTORIA, 2026. Installation view: New Museum, New York. Courtesy New Museum. Photo: Thomas Barrett