The influential former director of the Museum of Trendy Artwork in New York (MoMA), Glenn Lowry, has revealed his considerations over the attainable repeal of non-profit standing for US museums below the present Trump administration.
Talking on The Artwork World: What If…?! podcast, Lowry, who stepped down final month after 30 years in publish, mentioned the potential withdrawal of the (501(c)3) standing for museums, which makes them exempt from federal taxes below the proviso that such establishments are run for “charitable or academic functions”.
Chatting with journalist and podcast host Charlotte Burns, Lowry says: “Effectively, I am very involved. I feel that [(501(c)3) status] is the magic wand that allowed this nation to develop one of the strong cultural programmes on the planet…I feel we’re a federal authorities that’s ready to exert an excessive amount of energy, or authority, as a way to obtain a set of ambitions.”
His feedback observe a invoice handed by the US Home of Representatives final November, that may enable the Treasury Secretary broad powers to revoke the standing of non-profit organisations. The invoice has since stalled within the Senate, however considerations stay amongst US museum leaders and organisations.
In 2017, within the midst of Donald Trump’s first presidency, MoMA confirmed works by artists from majority-Muslim nations whose residents have been affected by an immigration ban. Burns asks why, by comparability, museums together with MoMA have at present gone “so quiet on politics”.
Lowry factors out that “each museum on this nation that could be a not-for-profit is federally funded by way of its tax exemption”. He continues: “They might not obtain a direct subsidy, however they function by way of a federal programme, proper? So, that’s a consideration I am certain that many make…
“We’re in a time the place all people’s wanting on the panorama and attempting to evaluate what’s one of the best ways to navigate by way of this and nonetheless ship the programme that they imagine in and are decided to ship.”
Because the chief of one of the high-profile museums on the planet, Lowry steered MoMA by way of a number of enlargement initiatives, oversaw a merger with the Queens-based Kunsthalle now often known as MoMA PS1, and considerably grew the establishment’s assortment, endowment and working price range.
Regardless of this, Burns factors out that MoMA’s customer numbers have shrunk from a pre-Covid excessive of over three million to 2.7 million in 2024, based on The Artwork Newspaper’s annual customer figures survey. “I feel the difficulty is much less shrinkage and extra turbulence—the mix of the pandemic, the outpouring of empathy and response to the homicide of George Floyd [in 2020], and so many different individuals of color mixed with actually dramatic adjustments within the political panorama,” says Lowry in response.
“We’re on this second the place the tectonic plates of our lives are realigning…. However it’s a critically fascinating second to be directing a museum as a result of you need to determine this out. It’s important to have, I feel, a very optimistic angle.
“You possibly can’t merely have a look at this and say, ‘Oh, effectively, subsequent 12 months it should be even worse. And the 12 months after that, it should be even worse.’ Your duty is to have a look at all these issues, assess those which are impacting you, after which navigate your approach by way of them.”
Lowry’s personal tenure at MoMA was marked by sporadic tensions and scandals. The museum’s former board chair, the personal fairness billionaire Leon Black, has come below hearth for his connections to the convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein. After Black opted to not search re-election as board chair in 2021, he was accused of rape in a number of lawsuits, which he denies.
Black nonetheless serves as a trustee of the museum. Marie-Josée Kravis is presently the chair of the museum’s board.
Requested how he navigates the influence of main political scandals on museum governance, Lowry says: “That is why you may have a powerful board that may speak [about] tough, contentious, contradictory, disturbing points by way of and arrive at a considerate and measured response. And I feel our board has been extraordinarily good at that.
“You simply have to determine, by way of a measured course of, what the proper resolution is. And we now have a board that’s terribly devoted to this museum, and each single individual that I’ve had the privilege of working with over 30 years has at all times made, so far as I am involved, the proper resolution, not for them personally, however for the museum. And I would come with Leon in that dialog.”
Lowry goes on to stipulate his future plans, which embody a lecture collection this autumn on the Musée du Louvre in Paris. He additionally goals to ascertain a management programme for museum administrators in partnership with the Artwork Bridges Basis.
“I felt very strongly as I began to consider my tenure that I benefited a lot from the recommendation and steering I bought from my mentors,” he says, referencing Philippe de Montebellos, the previous director of the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, Neil MacGregors, the previous director of the British Museum and Nick Serotas, the previous director of the Tate. “[I thought] it could be fascinating to see if we might develop a programme to assist different museum administrators acquire the information and expertise that was shared with me.”
Like quite a few different museum professionals, Lowry can also be trying to Saudi Arabia for his subsequent position, the place he’s taking up a publish as advisor to the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah. He’s additionally engaged on an exhibition on the Kiran Nadar Museum of Artwork in Delhi, devoted to an artist that he has “been taken with for a really very long time with a colleague, previously right here on the Museum of Trendy Artwork”.
On his successor, Christophe Cherix, MoMA’s longtime chief curator of drawings and prints, Lowry says: “Christophe is a superb and gifted curator, who’s fearless, and who will shock individuals with the instructions he strikes the museum.
“And I feel it is certainly one of his nice qualities that he can have a look at an artist we expect we all know —Marcel Broodthaers, Ed Ruscha, simply to call two—and discover one thing new and totally different of their work, that’s without delay shocking and compelling. My hope is that he’ll convey that very same spirit to the way in which he seems to be on the museum.”
