The Guggenheim's Director Is a Portrait of Modesty
By ANN LANDI

New York
The office of the new director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation is a surprisingly drab place. There are no pictures on the walls; the view is not of Central Park, opposite the museum, but of other buildings; and the furniture is standard-issue stuff that appears to be decades old. But Richard Armstrong exudes a sense of ease with his new surroundings. For the past four months, he has been getting to know the museum and its branches -- in Venice, Bilbao, Berlin and eventually in Abu Dhabi -- and becoming familiar with the staff. "I'm like any animal that's new to the kennel," he says. "You get to know the other animals and sniff out all the corners."
[Armstrong] Ken Fallin

A tall and lanky man with a broad grin, piercing blue eyes, and a snow-white beard, Mr. Armstrong, 59, was chosen for his post after Thomas R. Krens stepped down from a long and embattled 20-year tenure as director in February 2008. Mr. Krens became famous for expanding the museum's reach on a global scale (and supporting failed branches in places like Las Vegas, Brazil, and lower Manhattan), selling off major art from the collection, and underwriting shows that many considered of dubious aesthetic value, such as those dedicated to the fashion designer Giorgio Armani and "The Art of the Motorcycle." Some saw him as a prophetic visionary; others as a free-spending megalomaniac. Mr. Krens is now overseeing the completion of the Frank Gehry-designed Abu Dhabi branch, scheduled to open in four to five years.

Unlike his predecessor, who rose to the top with an M.B.A. but little hands-on curatorial experience, Mr. Armstrong has spent a lot of time in the trenches of museum work. His earliest ambitions, however, were of a more political bent. Born in Kansas City, Mo., he spent summers as a teenager working as a page for Rep. Richard Bolling and Sen. Stuart Symington. To escape the heat, he visited museums, especially the National Gallery, because they were free and air-conditioned.

In 1968, at the beginning of his sophomore year at Lake Forest College in Illinois and after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, Mr. Armstrong moved to Dijon, France. "I decided I could not be in the States any longer," he says. "I wasn't really a hippie, just more of an iconoclast." While living in Dijon, he discovered the joys of the local art and architecture. A full year in France, this time in Paris, followed after another year in college. "Even worse than the heat in Washington was the cold in Paris. I had an unheated one-room apartment in Montparnasse, and the Louvre was a very welcoming place."

After graduating with a degree in art history and trying his hand at free-lance journalism for a spell, he was accepted in 1973 as an intern in the Whitney Museum of American Art's independent study program. "They may have lowered their standards for guys. For women, it was a lot more competitive," given the much larger number of female applicants. To pay his rent, he took studio assistant jobs with established artists like Al Held and Nancy Graves. And after a year in the program, the Whitney hired him to work with maverick director Marcia Tucker. She soon encouraged him to move on to more adventurous turf, and he wound up in La Jolla, Calif., in 1975, at the local museum of contemporary art.

"It was a small dynamic seaside institution where you could swim to work," he recalls. "And it was a really interesting moment because Los Angeles was truly exploding." His first year there he worked on a show that looked at the University of California at Irvine's first 10 years, when the art-department faculty included Chris Burden, Bob Irwin and Alexis Smith, all major players in the Southern California avant-garde of the 1970s. Mr. Armstrong then moved to Los Angeles and became part of the artists' committee to organize the city's nascent Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.

The Whitney lured him back in 1982 to take over the independent study program, and he quickly moved into a curator's role as well, developing shows for such artists as Alexis Smith, Richard Artschwager, Mike Kelley, George Condo and Ellen Phelan. "I learned there the importance of artists inside the operation of a contemporary art museum. And also to some degree how powerful it is to have a band of like-minded people working together." The Whitney "had a glamorous history that went in and out of sync with the times. It was also an interesting moment because the staff was quite young." Mr. Armstrong worked with a group of curators that included Patterson Sims, Lisa Phillips, Adam Weinberg and Thelma Golden, all of whom went on to bigger posts at New York museums.
When he became curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh in 1992, Mr. Armstrong continued his advocacy of artists as integral to the life of a museum -- including the artists of western Pennsylvania. "If you truly believe that living artists are the first constituency of the museum, you have to deal with the artists within your parish," he says. In Pittsburgh, he added substantially the museum's collection of contemporary art. After being named director in 1996, he raised more than $50 million for the museum and added new endowments.

Mr. Armstrong's vision for the Guggenheim is a return to its mandate after it opened in 1959. "We'll be assertive," he says. "We need to expand on the original optimism and taste for the utopian that guided the museum in its beginnings." (Solomon R. Guggenheim and his art adviser and mistress, Hilla Rebay, were among the earliest enthusiasts of nonobjective art in this country, establishing a foundation for "the enlightenment of the public" in 1937. Wright signed on as the architect of the space because of their vision, but it took 15 years to complete the structure he conceived as a "temple of the spirit.") Mr. Armstrong does not see the museum as lagging behind other New York arts venues, noting that last year saw record attendance -- more than 1.1 million visitors. "We have an unusual building that allows for ideas to be executed in impressive ways."

He favors programming that mixes the audacious (a show of Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, held last year, featured a chain of cars hanging from the ceiling) with the historical (a Kandinsky survey opens in September). With the Guggenheim a global presence, he says, "the challenge is to make sure the parts are conjoined and working in harmony with one another."
But his first loyalty is, as always, to art and artists. "When you see something that matters to you, it's your job to find out what that means," he maintains. "So even though I'm not truly an art historian, in many ways I've been able to capitalize on my original journalistic impulses by helping people understand what they're looking at."

Mr. Armstrong's job, like his office, comes with few frills. No car and driver -- even though most of the museum staff is in quarters downtown -- and no subsidized apartment. The perks, he says, are in getting to venture into storage and look at the collection at any time and in managing "an exceptional group of people." Observers may find that he differs from Mr. Krens most notably in the size of his ego and in his generosity toward others. "I'm happy to have the spotlight," he admits. "But one of the privileges of being a leader is to help other people come into the light and grow."

Ms. Landi writes on culture and the arts for several publications.
Correction & Amplification
Richard Armstrong, the new director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, was born in Kansas City, Mo. In a previous version of this article, his place of birth was given as St. Louis.

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Smithsonian Announces New Hirshhorn Director

By Jacqueline Trescott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 27, 2009; Page C01
The Smithsonian Institution yesterday selected Richard Koshalek, former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, to lead the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
The appointment of Koshalek completes the turnover of leadership among three of the Smithsonian's national art galleries. Besides the Hirshhorn, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of African Art have had new directors appointed within the past year.

Reached in Los Angeles, Koshalek said now is an opportune moment to reposition the Hirshhorn as an international leader in its field because the new administration has acknowledged the role of arts and culture. "This is the perfect time and place in Washington where you have leadership from President Obama, who has an expanded view of the world," Koshalek said. "And I heard [Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton say in a speech that art and culture could be a tool for diplomacy and development."

What that would mean for the Hirshhorn, he hopes, is a expanded role in the global dialogue on contemporary art. "It can be done through convening conferences, for example. The Hirshhorn should commission new research on contemporary art and publish the 'Hirshhorn Papers,' " Koshalek said. He would also like the museum's curatorial staff to work and exchange with curators from across the country to "bring together the thought leaders," and develop new research and exhibitions.

Koshalek, 67, begins his new job in April.

For the past 10 years, Koshalek has been president of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. Last year, Koshalek was released from the final year of his contract by the school's board of trustees after protests by student, faculty and alumni over tuition increases and Koshalek's plan to have a Frank Gehry-designed, $50 million library and research center.

During his almost 20 years at the Los Angeles museum, popularly known as MOCA, Koshalek oversaw tremendous growth. In 1980 the museum had no collection, a staff of three and $50,000 in the bank. By the time Koshalek left in 1999, the museum had accumulated 4,000 works and was operated by 75 people. The holdings were built, he explained, by acquiring whole collections. By 1999, the museum had an endowment of nearly $50 million. The expansion drew worldwide attention. In 1983, Gehry renovated a police vehicle warehouse into the museum's first home, now called the Geffen Contemporary. Three years later, Arata Isozaki designed the museum's permanent home.

"Richard Koshalek has vast experience in both the education and museum worlds," Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough said in a statement yesterday. "His creativity brought modern and contemporary art to bear on issues of the day and will help the museum and the Institution reach broad audiences in technologically and aesthetically exciting ways."

The Hirshhorn, one of the Smithsonian's museums on the Mall, opened in 1974. It developed from the collection of businessman Joseph H. Hirshhorn and now has nearly 12,000 objects. "It has been very carefully expanded. There is something there to build on," Koshalek said.

A native of Wausau, Wis., Koshalek received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Minnesota. He worked at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis from 1967 to 1972. After the Walker, he was the assistant director of the Visual Arts program at the National Endowment for the Arts and then was director of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth from 1974 to 1976.

At MOCA, he worked with Kerry Brougher, the Hirshhorn's chief curator, who has been the museum's acting director since December 2007.