Director of the Guggenheim to Step Down
Richard Armstrong, the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, reported he prepared to retire from his part future calendar year, capping off extra than 14 many years top the institution and its global offshoots.
Armstrong, whose tenure bundled weathering the pandemic and responding to calls for adjust close to racial inequities, the two internally and on the museum’s walls, introduced the shift in an interview with The Economical Times that was published on Friday.
“Sometime future spring,” he explained in the interview, “I’ll be leaving the museum. It’ll be practically 15 yrs by then and that’s a long time. The board is rejuvenated, and lively — it’s a great moment.”
In a information launch, the museum said that in advance of Armstrong steps down in 2023, he will work with its board of trustees to locate his successor.
Underneath his management, Armstrong was tasked in current many years with responding to unionization efforts and an outcry about what associates of the museum’s curatorial section known as an “inequitable function setting that permits racism, white supremacy, and other discriminatory tactics.” Armstrong responded to the calls for for change by initiating conversations with the curators, stating that he observed it as an chance to become a much more various and equitable corporation.
The museum later on accepted a approach to deal with those people issues, generating it just one of the initially significant cultural companies to deliver details of an expanded variety effort amid industrywide phone calls for modify. The system bundled claims to bolster guidelines about reporting discrimination, and a new committee was billed with inspecting the institution’s exhibitions and acquisitions by the lens of fairness and variety.
Immediately after one of the museum’s top directors, Nancy Spector, stepped down amid charges of racism, the museum named Naomi Beckwith to be successful her, earning her the institution’s first Black deputy director and main curator. Another management shake-up followed later on that year, when the billionaire collector J. Tomilson Hill was appointed as board chairman, and the author Claudia Rankine was elected its next at any time Black female trustee.
Armstrong also oversaw a particularly tumultuous period of time several several years back as the Guggenheim sought to broaden abroad with a new museum in Abu Dhabi. The undertaking was satisfied with protests and needs for assurances that the laborers would be compensated and treated rather, primary to promises from Armstrong that the museum was deeply fully commited to labor troubles. The lengthy-delayed challenge is scheduled to be finished in 2025, after Armstrong’s departure.
One more important alter under Armstrong came before this 12 months, when the Guggenheim quietly erased the Sackler name from an education and learning middle above the family’s ties to the opioid crisis.
“As a management group, we have listened, uncovered and tailored to satisfy the switching dynamics of our system, brand, audiences, and funders,” Armstrong said in a assertion. “I appear forward to looking at the Guggenheim neighborhood continue on to flourish and be a catalyst for ingenious wondering and transformative art experiences prolonged after my departure.”
Richard Armstrong, the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, reported he prepared to retire from his part future calendar year, capping off extra than 14 many years top the institution and its global offshoots.
Armstrong, whose tenure bundled weathering the pandemic and responding to calls for adjust close to racial inequities, the two internally and on the museum’s walls, introduced the shift in an interview with The Economical Times that was published on Friday.
“Sometime future spring,” he explained in the interview, “I’ll be leaving the museum. It’ll be practically 15 yrs by then and that’s a long time. The board is rejuvenated, and lively — it’s a great moment.”
In a information launch, the museum said that in advance of Armstrong steps down in 2023, he will work with its board of trustees to locate his successor.
Underneath his management, Armstrong was tasked in current many years with responding to unionization efforts and an outcry about what associates of the museum’s curatorial section known as an “inequitable function setting that permits racism, white supremacy, and other discriminatory tactics.” Armstrong responded to the calls for for change by initiating conversations with the curators, stating that he observed it as an chance to become a much more various and equitable corporation.
The museum later on accepted a approach to deal with those people issues, generating it just one of the initially significant cultural companies to deliver details of an expanded variety effort amid industrywide phone calls for modify. The system bundled claims to bolster guidelines about reporting discrimination, and a new committee was billed with inspecting the institution’s exhibitions and acquisitions by the lens of fairness and variety.
Immediately after one of the museum’s top directors, Nancy Spector, stepped down amid charges of racism, the museum named Naomi Beckwith to be successful her, earning her the institution’s first Black deputy director and main curator. Another management shake-up followed later on that year, when the billionaire collector J. Tomilson Hill was appointed as board chairman, and the author Claudia Rankine was elected its next at any time Black female trustee.
Armstrong also oversaw a particularly tumultuous period of time several several years back as the Guggenheim sought to broaden abroad with a new museum in Abu Dhabi. The undertaking was satisfied with protests and needs for assurances that the laborers would be compensated and treated rather, primary to promises from Armstrong that the museum was deeply fully commited to labor troubles. The lengthy-delayed challenge is scheduled to be finished in 2025, after Armstrong’s departure.
One more important alter under Armstrong came before this 12 months, when the Guggenheim quietly erased the Sackler name from an education and learning middle above the family’s ties to the opioid crisis.
“As a management group, we have listened, uncovered and tailored to satisfy the switching dynamics of our system, brand, audiences, and funders,” Armstrong said in a assertion. “I appear forward to looking at the Guggenheim neighborhood continue on to flourish and be a catalyst for ingenious wondering and transformative art experiences prolonged after my departure.”