{"id":72320,"date":"2025-09-18T23:08:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T23:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/72320\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T23:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T23:08:10","slug":"glenn-lowry-says-moma-must-actively-defend-its-values-in-trump-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/72320\/","title":{"rendered":"Glenn Lowry Says MoMA Must ‘Actively Defend’ Its Values in Trump Era"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOver the summer, just before departing the Museum of Modern Art<\/a> as its longtime director, Glenn Lowry<\/a> appeared to obliquely address the Trump administration\u2019s ongoing attack on cultural institutions, noting that the veteran New York institution must fight to continue mounting the shows that it does.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf we believe in a museum that celebrates the values of pluralism, that honors freedom of expression, and protects minority rights and dissent, then we will have to actively defend our values,\u201d Lowry said in June at MoMA\u2019s Party in the Garden, according to a New York Times appraisal<\/a> of his 30-year tenure. \u201cIf we want a museum that will collect and display the most daring and challenging artists of our time, then we will have to fight for that. If we want a museum that is a home for artists, scholars, curators and visitors from around the world, then we will have to speak out loudly for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\n\tMoreover, he said, \u201cin the months and years ahead, we will have choices to make that are consequential, perhaps more so than at any other time since the Second World War.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump has not yet come for MoMA, but he has repeatedly lashed out against the Smithsonian Institution, which operates a network of museums mostly based in Washington, D.C. The president has claimed that these institutions have \u201ccome under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology\u201d and threatened a crackdown on the exhibitions they hold.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt least one artist has already claimed censorship amid the upheaval: Amy Sherald canceled her National Portrait Gallery survey, alleging that the museum asked her to remove a painting of a Black trans woman posing as the Statue of Liberty.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnder Lowry, MoMA on at least one occasion mounted a presentation that was obliquely critical of the Trump administration. In 2017, when Trump banned citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the US, MoMA quickly responded by installing works by artists who hailed from those nations in its permanent collection galleries. The move was widely applauded<\/a> by critics in New York.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat presentation was an anomaly within MoMA\u2019s programming, which generally has not been explicit in dealing with the policies of the current President.<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, Jason Farago, the critic who wrote the Times appraisal of Lowry, suggested that the museum is likely to face the same pressures as other institutions across the nation. With a hint of ominousness, Farago quotes Lowry as saying, \u201cWhat we do over the coming years will define who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThose future activities will be overseen by Christophe Cherix, who was named MoMA\u2019s new director after serving as chief curator of drawings and prints. His first major project is a retrospective for Wifredo Lam, a Surrealist painter born in Cuba.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the summer, just before departing the Museum of Modern Art as its longtime director, Glenn Lowry appeared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,49628,19,17,48751],"class_list":{"0":"post-72320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-glenn-lowry","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-museum-of-modern-art"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}