Glenn Lowry became the sixth director of The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) in 1995. He has overseen the physical transformation of the Museum’s campus through two building campaigns that have more than doubled the size of MoMA’s galleries, quintupled its endowment, created an education and research center, and inspired a new model for the presentation of modern and contemporary art. Lowry has championed innovation, both onsite and online, to grow MoMA’s annual visitation to nearly 3 million in the galleries and 35 million across moma.org. He expanded the Museum’s curatorial departments, with the addition of Media and Performance, and supported MoMA’s intellectual growth by creating new research programs like Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (CMAP).
In 2000, he led the merger of MoMA with the contemporary art center PS1, and in 2015, he worked with Thelma Golden to introduce a joint fellowship program with the Studio Museum in Harlem for rising professionals in the arts. Lowry is a strong advocate of contemporary artists and their work and he has lectured and written extensively in the support of contemporary art, on the role of museums in society, and on other topics related to his research interests. He currently serves on the boards of The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Clark Art Institute, the Art Bridges Foundation and The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, as well as on the advisory boards of the Istanbul Modern and the Mori Art Museum. Lowry is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a resident member of the American Philosophical Society.
He and Zuckerman discuss courting risk, creating the time to think, controlling the process, professional guidelines, the goal for museums to be independent and private enterprises, thinking that opens possibilities, being fearless, passion, and why art matters!