Richard Armstrong
The Guggenheims
Summary
Richard Armstrong discusses eight decades of evolution within the Guggenheim Foundation, from its public origins in New York to its three sites in the US, Italy, and Spain, with an early look at the impending Frank Gehry–designed Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi.
Richard Armstrong
As director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation since 2008, Richard Armstrong leads the Guggenheim Foundation and its constellation of museums, in addition to serving on the Guggenheim Foundation Board of Trustees. Previously, Armstrong was the Henry J. Heinz II director at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (1996–2008). He has also held curatorial positions at the Carnegie Museum of Art (1992–96), the Whitney Museum of American Art (1981–1992), and the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art in California (1975–79). A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Armstrong graduated from Lake Forest College in Illinois with a BA in art history, having studied at the Université de Dijon and the Université de Paris, Sorbonne.
Well, there’s a curatorial council. Ideas are put before that. Curators critique one another’s precis and their selections of work and/or artist. We look at with Nancy Spector, the chief curator… we recognise that these exhibitions can be a 1 or $2 million investment from the museum side. Then we make certain that we have a universal look and that the exhibitions and therefore the collections really represent creativity from around the globe.
Well, we’re lucky in a way, because we have a head start. I think demographically we have the youngest audience of any museum in the city. But as you say, how to make that offering remain attractive will be a challenge. And part of it I think will be in our carefully presenting exhibitions and programmes that offer people a way in. And I don’t just mean that physically, I mean mentally, and I would say even spiritually.
There are probably at least two things that need to be said. One is that without a fully self-aware citizenry, you don’t have a well-functioning country and neither is a society doing the best that it can. And secondarily, I would say this is one of my private pitches to people, museums are natural havens for non-conformists, for eccentrics, for people who are unable to, in one way or another, fully be part of what’s going on, they need to be encouraged.