The Museum of Modern Arts (MoMA) Long -term head of drawings and prints, Christophe Cherix, is tapped to lead the New York City setting. Taking over from the departing director Glenn Lowry, who announced his decision to resign last fall, Cherix will start his new role in September, according to a statement today, March 28.
Cherix was born in Switzerland and studied at the University of Geneva and served as a curator of the print collection of the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire of the city before he came to Moma in 2007. In 2010 he was appointed main curator of the museum of the Museum of Prints and Illustrated Books, which merged with the Department of Drawing in 2013. Broodthaers and Jasper Johns.
Cherix’s appointment, reported for the first time by the New York Timesarranges months of speculation about the next leader of the museum. Selected from an ‘international pool of impressive candidates’, according to the press statement of MoMa, the modest veteran in the industry can be seen by some as a safe choice for the controversy-notified institution.
In an interview with Hyperallergic In February 2017, when Moma works in his permanent collection of views by pieces by artists of majority-Muslim countries focused on Trump’s travel ban, Cherix stated that he wanted the project to be ‘inclusive and not disruptive’.
“It was more this idea to embrace those works within our tradition, within the story of our collection, within our values,” Cherix said Hyperallergic.
An aversion to disruption characterized the leadership of Glenn Lowry, whose term of office was characterized by his unsympathetic views on demonstrators who exposed the ties of museum donors to human rights violations.
In 2021, in the midst of the 10-week strike Moma campaign against poisonous philanthropy outside the Midtown head office, Lowry accused the activists of ‘destroying Moma’. He was also greatly criticized for his failure to remove the chattered financier Leon Black from Moma’s Board of Trustees after Black’s links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were revealed. (Black went as chairman in 2021 Stay on the board To this day.)
Protests have existed in the museum in recent years, most recently against the background of a deepening of the climate and the constant attacks of Israel on Gaza. Last February, the demonstrators called for the removal of MoMa board chairman Marie-Josée Kravis, whose husband co-founder of the private equity company of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts significantly invested In fossil fuels. In the fall, Pro-Palestinian activists protested Moma’s Hosting of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) Gala and her president, honorary president of Ronald Lauder, who often lobbys on behalf of Israel.
