Guggenheim Chooses a Curator, Not a ShowmanChester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
Richard Armstrong is to be the Guggenheim’s next director.
After a seven-month search, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation on Tuesday named Richard Armstrong of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh as its next director.
Annie Tritt for The New York Times
An installation by Jenny Holzer illuminated the restored Guggenheim on Monday night.
Mr. Armstrong, 59, who has been director of the Carnegie for 12 years, succeeds Thomas Krens, who announced in February that he was stepping down after nearly 20 years.
In a decision that was widely reported in the art world, Guggenheim trustees settled on Mr. Armstrong in late August but did not vote formally until its board meeting on Tuesday afternoon. Their choice appears to signal a distinct change in style for the Guggenheim, whose international ambitions under Mr. Krens have stirred some conflict within the institution in recent years.
“We were looking for someone with a passion for art who understood that the New York museum is at the center of our universe,” said Jennifer Blei Stockman, president of the Guggenheim’s board.
Under the long tenure of the provocative Mr. Krens, the Guggenheim transformed itself into a global brand with branches in Berlin, Venice and Bilbao, Spain, as well as a planned museum in Abu Dhabi that is expected to open in 2013. Now the Guggenheim seems eager for a more centered presence.
“We interviewed a lot of young avant-garde European and American museum directors and thought, do we want another maverick who puts their stamp on the museum or a seasoned expert who is a wise adult and who would put the needs of the institution and the staff first?” Ms. Stockman said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Armstrong, who assumes the post on Nov. 4, will nonetheless be responsible for the foundation’s global network of museums as well as its New York headquarters.
Just as the Metropolitan Museum selected a highly respected curator this month to be its next director, naming Thomas P. Campbell, a noted scholar, to succeed Philippe de Montebello, the Guggenheim’s search committee opted for a leader with a long curatorial history rather than a professional administrator or a fund-raising wizard.
Before he was named director of the Carnegie in 1996, Mr. Armstrong served there for four years, initially as a curator for contemporary art and then as the chief contemporary-art curator. In 1995 he organized the centennial version of the Carnegie International, a sprawling contemporary survey show.
Mr. Armstrong is also deeply familiar with New York’s museum culture. He worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1981 to 1992 in curatorial posts and as senior instructor of its Independent Study Program. He helped organize three of the Whitney’s Biennials — in 1987, 1989 and 1991 — along with a 1991 exhibition devoted to the sculptor Alexis Smith and other shows.
Sipping tea during an interview in the Carlyle Hotel, Mr. Armstrong who like Mr. Krens is tall and strapping at 6 feet 5 inches tall, said he saw his role as one of “empowering curators.”
Mr. Krens was often criticized for organizing exhibitions that were so sweeping in theme that they sometimes lacked sharp scholarly focus, like “Africa: The Art of a Continent” in 1996, “China: 5,000 Years” in 1998 and “Brazil: Body & Soul” in 2001. Some faulted him for unconventional shows like “The Art of the Motorcycle” in 1998 and “Giorgio Armani” in 2000.
Mr. Armstrong said it was “unlikely” that he would pursue that type of programming. He said he did not know Mr. Krens and had not yet consulted with him about the Guggenheim.
As director, he said, one of his aims will be to draw on the Guggenheim’s rich permanent collection as well as to present shows exploring what young artists are doing today.
“I remember when I was growing up the Guggenheim was frequently the source for enlightenment about European art, and then it had an edge for accommodating new, younger artists,” he said.
Today, Mr. Armstrong said, he finds the Guggenheim’s interest in Asia “and I hope Latin America” exciting. He said he was attracted by the museum’s “ability to bring information to the public that might otherwise be overlooked.”
Born in Kansas City, Mo., Mr. Armstrong studied art history at Lake Forest College in Illinois and said he was deeply influenced there by Franz Schulze, a historian of Modern architecture who he said helped him appreciate art as well.
Mr. Armstrong studied in France at the University of Dijon and then the Sorbonne in Paris. “It was in France that I started looking at art more seriously,” he said. “By the time I left I was pretty well hooked.”
But his first memory of looking at art dates from when he was living in Washington in his early teens. “I would go to museums because they were air-conditioned,” he said. “I particularly remember a painting by Arthur Dove at the Phillips Collection.”
The Guggenheim has just completed a sweeping renovation of the facade of its 1959 Frank Lloyd Wright building. (To mark the occasion, a light projection by the artist Jenny Holzer made its debut on the facade Monday night and will appear each Friday night through December.)
Mr. Armstrong is no stranger to renovations. At the Carnegie he oversaw the refurbishing of several of the museum’s exhibition spaces, including the Scaife Galleries and the Heinz Galleries and an expansion of the Heinz Architectural Center. He was also responsible for acquisitions like “Untitled (Domestic),” a monumental 2002 sculptural installation by the British artist Rachel Whiteread that the Carnegie bought jointly with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.
In June Mr. Armstrong announced that he would resign as the Carnegie’s director. “I slowly had come to the conclusion that I should wrap things up,” he said, adding that he wanted to give his successor a long lead time to organize the next Carnegie International.
Although had not lined up a job, he said, he had had one “casual conversation” with the Guggenheim before he resigned.
Mr. Armstrong said he hoped to bolster the Guggenheim’s online presence to help lure younger audiences to the museum. “It’s their portal to knowledge,” he said. “We’ve got a generation that knows all about Paris Hilton but nothing about Paris. That needs to be enriched and brought back into alignment.”
He said that while he dislikes using the term “permanent collection” because it “turns everyone off,” he hopes to find ways of re-interpreting the Guggenheim’s holdings in eye-opening ways.
“That’s one of the things you want to reassert especially to young people, who think everything is disposable,” he said. “One of the charms of the museum is being able to go back time and again and see the same works in the same place month after month, year after year.”
“Those talismans,” Mr. Armstrong said, “are extremely useful to people’s development.”
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Richard Armstrong appointed director of the Guggenheim
New director of Guggenheim sets out change of direction for New York museum
Jason Edward Kaufman | 23.9.08 | Issue 195
Richard Armstrong, a specialist in American 20th century art and the former director of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, was named the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Guggenheim Museum on Tuesday 23 September. On the eve of his appointment he gave an interview to The Art Newspaper outlining his vision for the New York museum and its overseas branches.
Mr Armstrong will head a global network of museums in Venice, Bilbao and Berlin, and will direct the organisation’s flagship museum in New York, filling the posts long held by Thomas Krens who stepped down in February after two decades. Mr Armstrong, 59, had led the Carnegie since 1996, leaving in June this year. He takes up his new post at the Guggenheim on 4 November.
He told The Art Newspaper that the vision he presented to the search committee consisted of adding intellectual heft to the Guggenheim, empowering the curators, and finding new ways to make the museum relevant, especially to younger audiences. “My concern was that all the museums, and New York maybe foremost, be seen as exemplars of great intellectual enterprise. The search committee felt the same way and responded.”
While the board remains committed to enhancing the museum’s connection with Asia and Latin America, there does not seem to be “a big appetite at present to keep adding sites to the operation,” Mr Armstrong says. Getting a handle on Abu Dhabi, where a new Guggenheim branch is scheduled to open in 2013, will be a challenge, he says. There is, he adds, interest in improving the focus on the programme in New York, where most of the Guggenheim’s board members live.
Mr Armstrong says he intends to more fully integrate the branches and increase their ability to generate and share exhibitions. He also intends to develop partnerships with major museums outside the Guggenheim network. “To me, Tate looks like the most logical long-term partner,” he says, citing the current Louise Bourgeois retrospective co-organised with Tate and Pompidou (at the Guggenheim New York until 28 September). He will meet with Tate director Nicholas Serota in London in October.
Richard Armstrong joined the Carnegie as a curator in 1992 after 12 years at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York where he co-organised four of that museum’s influential biennials. Mild-mannered and known for his fiscal prudence, his appointment marks a return to more traditional museum leadership after Thomas Krens’s revolutionary and often controversial expansionism.
William Mack, chairman of the foundation board, says that “Richard Armstrong has the wisdom and demeanor—as well as the knowledge, stature, and status—we sought in a new leader for the Foundation.” President Jennifer Stockman, who co-chaired the search committee with Mr. Mack, says that his leadership is based on “artistic vision, diplomacy, and inspiration.”
Mr Krens transformed the Guggenheim from a “boutique institution” into one of the world’s most recognised museum brands, but attracted sharp criticism for the franchise-like partnerships he established around the world. He clashed with former chairman Peter Lewis, the largest donor in the Guggenheim’s history (he had given $77m), who left in 2005 after the board failed to heed his advice that the museum should shore up its finances and operations in New York rather than continue to expand overseas.
In 2005 Mr Krens announced that chief curator Lisa Dennison would be his successor as director of the New York museum, but she left after less than two years to become vice-president of Sotheby’s North and South America. The Guggenheim had difficulty recruiting a successor to serve under Mr Krens, who stepped down earlier this year as head of the foundation to act as the consultant overseeing development of the Guggenheim branch in Abu Dhabi, designed by Frank Gehry. Mr Armstrong says the trustees decided to recombine the positions of director and foundation head, “but getting a director at Fifth Avenue [in the future] is a possibility. That is not a closed proposition,” he adds.
The schedule of exhibitions now in place includes retrospectives of Catherine Opie, Kandinsky and Frank Lloyd Wright to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the newly-renovated landmark. (The announcement of Mr. Armstrong’s appointment came the day after the unveiling of the $26m renovation. Speaking at the ceremony, Mayor Michael Bloomberg quipped: “It’s one of the best facelifts I’ve seen on Fifth Avenue, but it’s probably not the most expensive.”)
Next, Mr Armstrong plans to find ways of exhibiting the little-seen permanent collection. He believes museums should show their treasures, and if a solution cannot be found within the restrictive Guggenheim, then he may seek other means of getting the works out of storage.
He says the museum has collected well in contemporary art, but the strategic plan calls for filling gaps in the early modern collection, such as Matisse, Malevich and others, and the museum also needs to improve its holdings of art from 1940 to 1975. Mr Armstrong notes that the only way to expand in these areas is by attracting gifts from patrons. The board also has identified Asian and Latin American art as areas to explore. But what distinguishes the Guggenheim from many other museums, he says, is its ties to early modern non-objective art. “That quest for utopia that so distinguishes the best political and aesthetic aspects of Europe from 1880 or 1890 onwards is really very deep in the psyche of the institution. And that has power today, as well,” he adds.
Most of all Mr Armstrong says he wants to add “gravitas of purpose” to the institution. He told the search committee that “through the curators, the institution will reassert itself as a place of high intellectual ambition, and they responded to that. That’s an intangible that is absolutely essential because that’s the credibility factor,” he says.
