MoMA PS1 celebrates 50 years with new brand platform

New York’s MoMA PS1 is marking its 50th anniversary with a new brand platform and campaign by agency Porto Rocha, positioning the Queens institution as a place for experimentation, community and contemporary culture.

Titled, PS1 Is Your Place, the campaign takes inspiration from the museum’s roots in the Alternative Space movement, which saw artists repurpose abandoned urban spaces as places for collaboration and creative exchange.

Founded in 1971 by Alanna Heiss, MoMA PS1 has been affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art since 2000. It remains one of the oldest and largest non-profit arts centres in the US devoted to contemporary art.

Porto Rocha’s challenge was to translate that history and continued legacy into a proposition that could attract new audiences at a time when New York’s so-called third places – informal spaces for socialising outside home and work – are increasingly disappearing.

The resulting platform frames MoMA PS1 as a place to explore, gather, dance, create and discover, while providing a flexible messaging system for its exhibitions, performances, educational programmes and community initiatives.

The campaign arrives as the institution looks to grow annual attendance to 300,000 by 2030. It follows MoMA PS1’s decision to make admission free for everyone from January 2026, making it the largest free museum in New York City.

Visually, Porto Rocha has chosen to push rather than overhaul the existing identity. The museum’s bold logo is enlarged and rotated across applications, while PS1 Slab – the distinctive typeface designed by Berton Hasebe – becomes a central vehicle for the campaign’s messaging.

The agency has also expanded the colour palette and introduced a more colloquial verbal identity, with copy designed to feel less like institutional messaging and more like an invitation from a neighbour.

The campaign launched alongside Greater New York 2026, MoMA PS1’s survey of artists living and working in the city, which features 53 artists and collectives across more than 150 works.

Rather than presenting the anniversary as a retrospective exercise, the work uses PS1’s history to make a case for its future role as a cultural meeting place. PS1 Is Your Place will continue across the institution’s programme of exhibitions and events throughout 2026 and beyond.