New York’s Museum of Trendy Artwork is about to enter a brand new period subsequent 12 months when Glenn Lowry, its longtime director, departs his publish after 30 years on the helm. “I didn’t wish to be the one who stayed too lengthy,” Lowry informed the New York Occasions. His departure has left with the New York artwork world with an enormous query: Who will take the reins at this venerable establishment, which has not led a seek for a brand new director for the reason that mid-Nineteen Nineties?
Lowry’s successor has massive footwear to fill. Below Lowry’s management, MoMA considerably expanded, each in scale and ambition. PS1, the modern artwork heart in Queens, was introduced below MoMA’s possession through Lowry in 2000, and MoMA’s foremost constructing has grown significantly in dimension below his management. So, too, has its endowment, which elevated eightfold below Lowry. Add to this the truth that MoMA’s total remit modified with the museum’s 2019 rehang, which broke artwork historical past free from the rigorous lineage that the establishment itself had been chargeable for engineering.
Who will decide up the slack from Lowry? Ever since its founding in 1929, MoMA has been led by white males, with Lowry being the newest within the succession of them. That implies that as soon as Lowry exits the highest place, MoMA now has a chance to vary that.
Past that, issues are far much less sure. Would possibly the subsequent MoMA director be a contemporary artwork skilled, or will that particular person be a specialist of a unique variety à la Lowry, who studied Islamic artwork earlier than coming to the museum? Will the subsequent MoMA director even be from the museum world in any respect? The Guggenheim Museum just lately picked a pacesetter of a college for its director; MoMA may comply with go well with.
Under, ARTnews takes 5 guesses about who would be the subsequent director to guide MoMA.
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Thelma Golden
Picture Credit score: Disney/Getty Photographs Why She’s Essential: Golden has revolutionized the Studio Museum in Harlem, a New York establishment devoted to artists of African descent the place she at present serves as director and chief curator. She’s fostered generations of artists and curators at that museum, and even pinpointed emergent kinds, famously proferring the notion of “post-black artwork,” which didn’t explicitly reply to Blackness itself. She beforehand labored as a curator on the Whitney Museum, the place her exhibitions included the polarizing 1994 survey “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Up to date American Artwork.”
Why She Could Be the Subsequent MoMA Director: Golden is broadly thought-about the probably candidate to succeed Lowry, who has made it a degree to agency up ties between MoMA and the Studio Museum. When the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork was searching for a brand new director through the late 2010s, she was reportedly a candidate. Though she finally misplaced out on the function to Max Hollein, the truth that her identify was talked about throughout that search is an indication that high-power New York museum boards consider she will be able to tackle a serious function.
There’s, nevertheless, one cause Golden might not take the MoMA job: museum administrators usually don’t depart their posts whereas an growth is underway, and the Studio Museum is at present within the strategy of setting up a brand new constructing. As soon as that constructing is accomplished, Golden can be much more prone to depart her present publish.
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Jessica Morgan
Picture Credit score: Don Stahl Why She’s Essential: Morgan is at present director of the Dia Artwork Basis, the New York group that runs a number of areas, together with Dia:Beacon simply outdoors town. For years, the muse had centered on Minimalist artwork by white males, resulting in the exclusion of many artists who didn’t match that invoice. Morgan has been express in regards to the gaps in Dia’s holdings and programming, and has actively sought to fill them in, with Dia’s curators bringing on artists akin to Delcy Morelos, Steve McQueen, and Carl Craig to do large-scale commissions previously few years. She had been a curator at Tate for greater than a decade earlier than becoming a member of Dia in 2014.
Why She Could Be the Subsequent MoMA Director: Morgan’s canon-expanding sensibility syncs with MoMA’s post-rehang ethos. And although art-historical information just isn’t a requirement for a place like MoMA’s director, that Morgan has it’s a level in her favor—her exhibitions have centered on under-recognized artists, globalized the Pop artwork motion, and made the case for figures akin to Martin Kippenberger. Plus, Morgan has labored in a high-ranking place at Tate Trendy, the closest equal to MoMA in Europe. However, with Morgan now having labored passionately at Dia for a decade, it is going to be tough to pry her away for a brand new place.
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Rebecca Rabinow
Picture Credit score: Picture Selcuk Acar/Anadolu Company/Getty Photographs Why She’s Essential: In 2016, after 26 years on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, Rabinow left her publish as a curator of recent artwork to return to her Southern roots. She took up a brand new place in Houston as the top of the Menil Assortment, one of the vital revered cultural areas in Texas, house to works by mid-century artists Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. Notable reveals on Cubism and Matisse on the Met ready her to replace the Menil Assortment, which she quickly helped develop. In 2018, after elevating $121 million, she opened the Menil Drawing Institute and introduced in a $50 million bump to the muse’s endowment.
Why She Could Be the Subsequent MoMA Director: Rabinow’s Met ties might have introduced her near high-power New York donors, and that makes her a pure match for MoMA. Plus, she helped the Met strengthen its trendy artwork choices and certainly may do the identical at MoMA. In 2014, responding to the competitors from MoMA, she organized a landmark exhibition that includes items from the 40-year-old assortment of cosmetics mogul Leonard Lauder, who had left the works in a big present to the museum the 12 months earlier than. By means of experiences like this, and related ones on the Menil, Rabinow has developed a definite ability shared by few of her friends: bringing long-held personal artwork troves to the general public.
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Franklin Sirmans
Picture Credit score: Picture Jason Koerner/Getty Photographs for PAMM Why He’s Essential: Earlier than arriving on the Los Angeles County Museum of Artwork in 2010, Sirmans was the curator of recent and modern artwork on the Menil Assortment in Houston and had a stint organizing New Orleans’s Prospect triennial. Then, in 2015, Sirmans was tapped to direct the Pérez Artwork Museum Miami, a place he nonetheless occupies. When Sirmans joined the Pérez, a number of administrators earlier than him struggled to interrupt by the museum’s foremost barrier on the time: a scarcity of considerable fundraising that saved its endowment properly beneath its said objective of $70 million. By hiring him, the trustees hoped that Sirmans may pull different necessary donors into the museum’s circles. He succeeded in doing so, simply as he had at LACMA, the place he established a brand new committee of philanthropists to focus solely on buying extra modern artwork.
Why He Could Be the Subsequent MoMA Director: Thus far, Sirmans has achieved greater than ship on the promise of a safer monetary future for the Pérez, whose endowment has grown below his path. Two new separate funds established to herald Black artwork and Latinx artwork to the gathering allowed Sirmans to raise PAMM’s profile. MoMA has sought in recent times to make its assortment extra sturdy in these areas, making him a probably enticing candidate in that regard.
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Courtney J. Martin
Picture Credit score: Paul Bruinooge/Patrick McMullan through Getty Photographs Why She’s Essential: Martin just lately turned government director of the Robert Rauschenberg Basis in New York (a publish as soon as held by Kathy Halbreich, previously MoMA’s affiliate director). Previous to the Rauschenberg Basis, Martin was director at Yale’s Middle for British Artwork, the place she led the middle’s post-pandemic opening with reveals centered on Bridget Riley, Marc Quinn, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Martin has beforehand additionally served as chief curator and deputy director on the Dia Artwork Basis in New York, the place she helped replace its Minimalism-focused program to characteristic extra artwork after that Nineteen Sixties motion.
Why She Could Be the Subsequent MoMA Director: Martin has one thing that different prime candidates in her subject might lack: a background that features time spent instructing at universities akin to Brown and Vanderbilt. Which means she has expertise in academia, and whereas that’s not essentially a requirement for a museum management function, it may typically be an asset, because it reveals a deeper understanding of the function establishments play within the research of artwork historical past. (Martin additionally has PhD and has written on Twentieth-century British artwork.) As MoMA seeks to achieve each most people and artwork historians, Martin might show notably useful.