Christophe Cherix (© 2021 The Museum of Trendy Artwork, New York; picture 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 choice to step down final fall, Cherix will begin his new function in September, in response to an announcement at present, March 28.
Born in Switzerland, Cherix studied on the College of Geneva and served as curator of the prints assortment of 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 modern artists together with Betye Saar, Marcel Broodthaers, and Jasper Johns.
Cherix’s appointment, first reported by the New York Instances, settles months of hypothesis concerning the museum’s subsequent chief. Chosen from an “international pool of impressive candidates,” in response to MoMA’s press assertion, the unassuming trade veteran could also be seen by some as a protected selection 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 said that he wished the venture 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 advised 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 towards poisonous philanthropy outdoors 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 had 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 lately towards 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 personal fairness agency that has invested considerably in fossil gas property. 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 regularly lobbies on behalf of Israel.
