Christophe Cherix (© 2021 The Museum of Trendy Artwork, New York; photograph by Peter Ross)
The Museum of Trendy Artwork’s (MoMA) longtime head of drawings and prints, Christophe Cherix, has been tapped to steer the New York Metropolis establishment. Taking up from outgoing director Glenn Lowry, who introduced his determination to step down final fall, Cherix will begin his new position in September, in accordance with a press release right now, March 28.
Born in Switzerland, Cherix studied on the College of Geneva and served as curator of the prints assortment of the town’s Musée d’Artwork et d’Histoire earlier than becoming a member of MoMA in 2007. In 2010, he was named chief curator of the museum’s Division of Prints and Illustrated Books, which merged with the Division of Drawings in 2013. He has overseen main reveals of contemporary and up to date artists together with Betye Saar, Marcel Broodthaers, and Jasper Johns.
Cherix’s appointment, first reported by the New York Instances, settles months of hypothesis in regards to the museum’s subsequent chief. Chosen from an “international pool of impressive candidates,” in accordance with MoMA’s press assertion, the unassuming trade veteran could also be seen by some as a secure alternative for the controversy-ridden establishment.
In an interview with Hyperallergic in February 2017, when MoMA changed works in its everlasting assortment shows with items by artists from majority-Muslim nations focused by Trump’s journey ban, Cherix acknowledged that he needed the mission to be “inclusive and not disruptive.”
“It was more this idea of embracing those works within our tradition, within the narrative of our collection, within our values,” Cherix instructed Hyperallergic.
An aversion to disruption characterised the management of Glenn Lowry, whose tenure was marked by his unsympathetic views towards protesters who uncovered museum donors’ ties to human rights abuses.
In 2021, amid the 10-week Strike MoMA marketing campaign in opposition to poisonous philanthropy exterior the museum’s Midtown headquarters, Lowry accused the activists of plotting to “destroy MoMA.” He was additionally extremely criticized for his failure to take away the disgraced financier Leon Black from MoMA’s board of trustees after Black’s hyperlinks to convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein have been revealed. (Black stepped down as chairman in 2021 however stays on the board to this present day.)
Protests have endured on the museum in recent times, most just lately in opposition to the backdrop of a deepening local weather emergency and Israel’s ongoing assaults on Gaza. Final February, demonstrators referred to as for the removing of MoMA Board Chair Marie-Josée Kravis, whose husband co-founded the Kohlberg Kravis Roberts non-public fairness agency that has invested considerably in fossil gasoline belongings. Within the fall, pro-Palestine activists protested MoMA’s internet hosting of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) gala and its president, museum Honorary Chair Ronald Lauder, which incessantly lobbies on behalf of Israel.
