New York’s Museum of Trendy Artwork is about to enter a brand new period subsequent yr 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 instructed the New York Occasions. His departure has left with the New York artwork world with a giant 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 huge sneakers to fill. Beneath Lowry’s management, MoMA considerably expanded, each in scale and ambition. PS1, the modern artwork middle in Queens, was introduced underneath MoMA’s possession through Lowry in 2000, and MoMA’s fundamental constructing has grown significantly in dimension underneath his management. So, too, has its endowment, which elevated eightfold underneath Lowry. Add to this the truth that MoMA’s whole remit modified with the museum’s 2019 rehang, which broke artwork historical past free from the rigorous lineage that the establishment itself had been accountable 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 most recent within the succession of them. That signifies 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. May the subsequent MoMA director be a contemporary artwork knowledgeable, or will that particular person be a specialist of a distinct type 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 lately picked a pacesetter of a college for its director; MoMA may observe swimsuit.
Beneath, ARTnews takes 5 guesses about who will be the subsequent director to steer MoMA.
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Thelma Golden
Picture Credit score: Disney/Getty Photos Why She’s Vital: Golden has revolutionized the Studio Museum in Harlem, a New York establishment devoted to artists of African descent the place she presently 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 Modern American Artwork.”
Why She Might Be the Subsequent MoMA Director: Golden is broadly thought-about the more than likely 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 on the lookout for a brand new director through the late 2010s, she was reportedly a candidate. Though she in the end 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 tackle a significant function.
There may be, nevertheless, one motive 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 presently within the means of developing a brand new constructing. As soon as that constructing is accomplished, Golden can be much more more likely to depart her present publish.
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Jessica Morgan
Picture Credit score: Don Stahl Why She’s Vital: Morgan is presently director of the Dia Artwork Basis, the New York group that runs a number of areas, together with Dia:Beacon simply exterior the 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 reminiscent of 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 Might Be the Subsequent MoMA Director: Morgan’s canon-expanding sensibility syncs with MoMA’s post-rehang ethos. And although art-historical information shouldn’t be 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 reminiscent of 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 troublesome to pry her away for a brand new place.
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Rebecca Rabinow
Picture Credit score: Picture Selcuk Acar/Anadolu Company/Getty Photos Why She’s Vital: In 2016, after 26 years on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, Rabinow left her publish as a curator of contemporary artwork to return to her Southern roots. She took up a brand new place in Houston as the pinnacle of the Menil Assortment, one of the vital revered cultural areas in Texas, residence 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 increase. 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 Might 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 fashionable artwork choices and absolutely 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 yr 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 non-public artwork troves to the general public.
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Franklin Sirmans
Picture Credit score: Picture Jason Koerner/Getty Photos for PAMM Why He’s Vital: Earlier than arriving on the Los Angeles County Museum of Artwork in 2010, Sirmans was the curator of contemporary 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 via the museum’s fundamental barrier on the time: an absence of considerable fundraising that saved its endowment nicely beneath its said aim of $70 million. By hiring him, the trustees hoped that Sirmans may pull different essential 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 Might 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 underneath his route. 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 strong in these areas, making him a probably engaging candidate in that regard.
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Courtney J. Martin
Picture Credit score: Paul Bruinooge/Patrick McMullan through Getty Photos Why She’s Vital: Martin lately grew to become 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 Heart 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 Sixties motion.
Why She Might Be the Subsequent MoMA Director: Martin has one thing that different prime candidates in her discipline might lack: a background that features time spent instructing at universities reminiscent of Brown and Vanderbilt. Meaning she has expertise in academia, and whereas that isn’t essentially a requirement for a museum management function, it could possibly typically be an asset, because it reveals a deeper understanding of the function establishments play within the examine of artwork historical past. (Martin additionally has PhD and has written on Twentieth-century British artwork.) As MoMA seeks to achieve each most of the people and artwork historians, Martin might show notably useful.
