Earn Your Luck: The Director of MOMA on Artists and Billionaire Board Members

Glenn Lowry on the power of stress, why museums should never issue statements and whether art should be considered an asset class

My latest column for my Earn Your Luck series centers on Glenn Lowry, who ran the Museum of Modern Art for three vaunted decades. In the wide-ranging interview, he talks about his reign: how to guide staff from the back so you let them shine, whether it’s OK to make a big bucket of cash on art, and why there’s no other museum like New York’s great MOMA.

He’s to the point, original, and doesn’t shy from difficult questions – in fact, he attacks them with grace, wit, and honesty. Sit with a cup of tea or a glass of wine and enjoy an interview where you may learn about art as an asset class, how to handle a testy billionaire or a self-questioning creative type, and the very role art plays in our democracy.

Read on and enjoy at the Wall Street Journal.

Holly

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MoMA’s Former Director on How to Handle Artists and Billionaires

FOR THE PAST three decades, Glenn Lowry made a habit of traipsing through each gallery of the 708,000-square-foot Museum of Modern Art in New York City on weekday mornings. Trim and fit, wearing his signature Nehru-collared jacket, he might have been found kneeling to erase a smudge on the wall, peering up to check on a painting’s lighting or simply standing alone in a corner, witnessing how people flowed through a gallery. Lowry admits, “I drove the facilities guys crazy.”