Richard Armstrong, the sixth director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, indicated in an interview in the Economical Times right now that he will be leaving his post come spring subsequent year. In the course of his 14-12 months directorship, Armstrong presided in excess of sea alterations at the Guggenheim that were of one particular piece with broader, shifting attitudes on labor, illustration, and philanthropic ties in the artwork planet, together with refusing long term presents from customers of the Sackler family members and the unionization of staff members in 2019. But in modern yrs, Armstrong has arrive below hearth for his administration fashion, which some have tied to greater challenges of gender and race fairness at the museum.
In 2008, Armstrong succeeded Thomas Krens, who had been at the helm for an even extended stretch of 20 decades. Armstrong’s appointment signaled a change in path for the museum, which underneath Krens’s leadership had remodeled into a international manufacturer with recently erected outposts in Bilbao, Spain Berlin, Germany and two places in Las Vegas that closed quickly right after opening. In contrast to Krens’s popularity as a businessman eager on escalating the endowment (which additional than quintupled all through his tenure) and reworking the Guggenheim into a luxury brand name, Armstrong entered the position as an alum of the Whitney’s Impartial Analyze Software, a former studio assistant to Summary Expressionist artist Al Held and sculptor Nancy Graves, and a curator at the Whitney and later on the Carnegie Museum of Artwork in Pittsburgh. Before long right after he was appointed director, he informed the Wall Street Journal that his purpose was to “to develop on the unique optimism and taste for the utopian that guided the museum in its beginnings.”
And without a doubt, the exhibitions that the Guggenheim place on below Armstrong could be interpreted as a return to the museum’s roots as a winner of modernist and avant-garde artists, which includes the first main United States exhibit of the work of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (the Guggenheim’s most frequented exhibition to date) a showcase of the perform of the German art movement Zero and retrospectives for László Moholy-Nagy, Agnes Martin, On Kawara, and Alberto Burri. For a lot of critics, it was a welcome modify from shows like The Art of the Motorcycle and a Giorgio Armani retrospective that characterized Krens’s reign.
But Armstrong was at situations hampered by the ambitions of his predecessor. In 2006, Krens initiated options to make the biggest Guggenheim to day in Abu Dhabi. That building job, besieged by quite a few delays, nevertheless continues to be underneath building 16 yrs immediately after it was first announced. (It is slated to eventually be entire in 2025.) It was also the subject matter of a number of protests organized by the Gulf Labor artist coalition in New York and at the Guggenheim’s European spots, which decried very poor doing the job circumstances in Abu Dhabi.
Armstrong faced criticism in 2020 from present-day and previous staff members arranging underneath the title “A Better Guggenheim” for “nurturing a culture of unchecked racism, sexism, and classism across all departments, stages, and destinations.” Among the the several issues detailed ended up that he had shown a condescending perspective toward Chaédria LaBouvier — a Black curator who organized a 2019 Guggenheim clearly show on Jean-Michel Basquiat and later on termed that encounter “the most racist specialist experience of my life” — and his propensity for producing “culturally incompetent comments.”
Armstrong also raised eyebrows when IRS filings at the conclusion of 2021 confirmed that he had manufactured a history $1.5 million in whole payment, even as 11% of the Guggenheim’s employees was furloughed because of to COVID-19.
Without immediately addressing these allegations, Armstrong acknowledged some of the Guggenheim’s historical shortcomings on matters of range in the Money Times interview. “The museum introduced by itself earlier as a world-wide institution, but it experienced a pretty myopic check out of the world,” he reported.
In a assertion shared with Hyperallergic, the museum noted that Armstrong will go on to lead very long-expression and each day functions until eventually his departure and perform with the board to determine and transition to new management.
