The New Museum's Newest Show Is About the Street Outside Its Door

"A street, a neighborhood, and a state of mind." That's how the New Museum describes the Bowery in the wall text for The Bowery: Devil's Mile, which opened September 24 on the second floor and runs through January 31, 2027. The museum calls it the first exhibition to trace the history and culture of New York's oldest thoroughfare. The street it covers starts at the front door of 235 Bowery.

The timing tells you something. The museum reopened its 60,000-square-foot expansion on March 21, 2026. The building started facing outward in stages. The new facade artwork went up in March, the plaza sculpture in May, and the lobby restaurant opened in July. Now the exhibition program has turned to face the street as well. Taken together, this is the first fall in years when someone who lives a few blocks away can treat the museum as part of the block.

Five Centuries on One Floor

The show covers the whole range of what the Bowery has been. The museum's list starts with a Lenape footpath and moves through farms and cattle drives, racetracks and pleasure gardens, theaters, concert halls, tattoo parlors and dime museums, and finally an artists' community that "ushered in yet another new era for the street." The cast of characters runs from Peter Stuyvesant and P.T. Barnum to Jacob Riis, William Burroughs, Eva Hesse and Keith Haring.

Some of the objects are the kind you'd stop a friend to point at. According to the museum's August 6 announcement, the show includes an 1830s hand-pump fire engine, a "Feejee Mermaid" of the kind dime museums put on display, and Jacob Riis photographs from How the Other Half Lives. The artists include Lynda Benglis, John Giorno, Nan Goldin, Adolph Gottlieb, Keith Haring, Eva Hesse, Robert Indiana, Brad Kahlhamer, June Leaf, Reginald Marsh, Martha Rosler, Billy Sullivan, Cy Twombly and Tom Wesselman. The lead image is a 1945 Weegee photograph titled The Foreman Of The Devils Was Peeved… because the assistant devils were not in costume. It's a fitting picture to have on view in October.

Lisa Phillips, the museum's Director Emerita, curated the show with Thalia Stefaniuk, Curatorial Assistant. Phillips led the institution through decades on this street. Her show treats the Bowery as a place that keeps reinventing itself, "the haunt of gangs, performers, entrepreneurs, and artists."

The Parts of the Building That Cost Nothing

A history of the street makes more sense once you know how much of the building now opens onto it. Before you buy a ticket for anything, three pieces of the expansion are already part of the walk down the Bowery.

1. The plaza at Bowery and Prince Street. The museum built it for art installations, performances and gatherings. Its first commission, Sarah Lucas's VENUS VICTORIA, went up May 12, 2026, and stays for two years.
2. The facade. Tschabalala Self's Art Lovers shows an embracing couple. It sits where the SANAA building meets the new OMA addition, and you can see it from Bowery and Prince.
3. Oberon, the lobby restaurant. Its own FAQ says museum admission is not required to dine.

Oberon gets you through the door most often, and you can get in even when the galleries are dark. While the museum is open, you enter through the main entrance. When it's closed, the restaurant tells guests to come in through Freeman Alley, off Rivington Street between Bowery and Chrystie, using the last door on the left. The posted hours are Monday 5 to 10 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 1 a.m., and Sunday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Another line on the same site gives slightly different closing times, so check oberonnyc.com before planning a late Sunday.

The museum describes Oberon as an all-day restaurant and bar. It's run by The Oberon Group, the team behind Rhodora, June and Rucola. Ali Ghriskey is the museum's executive chef. Ahead of the July 7 opening, Eater NY described a Hudson Valley-sourced modern American menu. It included little gem salad, deviled eggs, oysters, black bass crudo, a dry-aged beef burger with Gruyere, and a chanterelle-and-pea pasta. Starters ran $12 to $24 and entrees $26 to $42 at launch. The fall menu may have changed since then.

For the galleries themselves, the visit page lists adult admission at $28. Seniors pay $24, visitors with disabilities $22 and students $19, and visitors 18 and under get in free. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, until 9 p.m. on Thursdays. From 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursdays admission is pay-what-you-wish, with advance reservations required online.

October 17 Puts the Show Out on the Street

All of this comes together on Saturday, October 17. The museum's fall programs announcement calls Community Day: Art and Celebration on the Bowery a museum-wide day of workshops, performances and activations, "with free admission for our Lower East Side neighbors." It runs from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The museum hasn't published a full list of who qualifies as a neighbor. Details on free resident tickets are on the event page.

The program lines up closely with the exhibition upstairs. The show's wall text lists tattoo parlors among the Bowery's old entertainments, and on Community Day Daredevil Tattoo is doing flash tattoos. David Mulkins is leading Bowery walking tours that meet in the lobby. Alison Kuo is running a Cantonese Opera collar-making and portrait session. There's also a cut-poetry and collage workshop and a Swami Sound listening session and DJ set. Activities are spread across the Theater, the Forum and the Sky Rooms.

The same day, FABnyc is running the Lower East Side Arts & Culture Open House, with free activities at institutions across the neighborhood. Listed participants include ABC No Rio, Abrons Arts Center, Artists Alliance, Downtown Art, the International Center of Photography, La MaMa, Think!Chinatown and the New Museum. The museum's announcement suggests spending the rest of the day in the neighborhood after its own program.

The Rest of October at 235 Bowery

Community Day opens a week of programs aimed at people who live nearby. Three of the four events in the table can be attended for free.

Kuo's performance builds on her Community Day workshop. It draws on Cantonese Opera traditions and her family's migration from Hong Kong. Bowery Art Space provides all materials, so a teenager can walk in after school with nothing in hand.

A Few Blocks West, After the Galleries

The exhibition ends with the Bowery still changing, and the streets just west of it have gained several new spots since summer. At Broome and Mott, two openings face each other across the corner. Frenchette Bakery, from Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr, opened its third location at 370 Broome Street on July 14. Eater noted it was the first Frenchette Bakery to serve a bacon, egg and cheese. Cafe Fig opened across the street at 365 Broome in late September, serving spanakopita croissant twists and a banana churro latte.

One block up, Dante Elizabeth Street opened at 210 Elizabeth Street, at Prince, in late September. It's the newest outpost of the Greenwich Village aperitivo bar that has been around since 1915, and Eater says it takes its name from the city garden across the way. The menu centers on martinis and spritzes, with an open kitchen turning out chicken diavola and Japanese sea bream. From the museum's plaza, it's a short walk west along Prince Street.

The street in Weegee's 1945 photograph has been through more incarnations since then than the museum could fit on one floor. Danielle Lacko works with owners on the Bowery and in Nolita, where buildings and the blocks around them keep changing, and can show you how a home on these streets fits into that history. Request a Home Valuation and see where your address stands this fall.