MoMA's alliance with the High | ajc.com

A few months back, Museum of Modern Art director Glenn Lowry was viewing posters for the High Museum of Art’s much-anticipated “Picasso to Warhol: Fourteen Modern Masters” exhibit. Eying what might be termed a greatest hits parade of masterworks by the likes of Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock and Joan Miró that rarely leave display in the New York museum, Lowry admitted thinking, “How did we ever agree to that?”

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Ben Rose, Ben RoseGlen Lowry (left), director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Michael Shapiro, director of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, have worked together on the High's latest exhibit.

But the depth of MoMA’s permanent collection assures that its walls in Midtown Manhattan won’t be naked until the High show ends April 29. And Lowry, who has run the modern and contemporary art institution founded in 1929 since 1995, has pushed to extend its reach nationally and internationally.

“It’s an experiment and an important event in our life,” he said of the four-year, six-exhibit arrangement with the High, which he believes is a model MoMA could transfer to other cities.

The High, which paid $6.4 million to Paris’ Louvre as part of a three-year partnership that concluded in 2009, declined to disclose details of its financial arrangement with MoMA.

A long-time colleague of High Museum director Michael Shapiro, native New Yorker Lowry spoke warmly about the budding partnership between the institutions and the High’s growing national profile over the course of an hour-long interview with the AJC.

Q: Were you seriously concerned about how many major pieces you sent to the High for “Picasso to Warhol?”

A: We’re lucky in that we have real depth across the board, but what Atlanta got is the best of the best. It’s A-plus Pollock, A-plus Matisse, A-plus Warhol and right down the line. It is strength to strength and that was the goal, that we really wanted these anchor shows to be a way for the Museum of Modern Art to say to an audience, look at all the great works of art that we’re privileged to be responsible for. And if you like these, we hope you’ll come up and see some more. It’s in our interests to produce the strongest possible exhibitions.

Q: Has MoMA struck a partnership with another museum quite like this before?

A: No, this is the first time we’ve actually sat down and thought through a kind of multi-pronged, multi-year approach with a sister institution. And it’s been a terrific experience for us so far, because you put so much time normally into the planning of an exhibition, it happens and everybody moves on to something else. You never really get to take advantage of the friendships that have been built up, shared interests that have been built up, the audience that has been stimulated. And because of this approach with the High, it changes your focus. You can actually construct a program that has some texture to it.

Q: It’s easy to see what the High gets out of the arrangement. How does this partnership work for MoMA?

A: There are both short and long-term goals. There is of course a considerable fee that the High is providing us. There is the opportunity to investigate with a sister institution our collection, which is about research and knowledge. And the opportunity in the short-term to generate awareness about the Museum of Modern Art’s programs.

The middle and longer-term [payoff], I hope, is the development of an increased audience for modern art, which means an increased audience for what we do. Whether it connects with us through our doors on 53rd Street, through our website or exhibitions we will generate elsewhere in the world, that’s all important, and critical even, to our long-term success.

And parallel with that, there’s the opportunity to develop membership at a national level. [MoMA has 127,000 household memberships, 15 percent of them outside New York, including 5,000 member households in metro Atlanta.]

Q: The High bills its exhibit programs with other museums as partnerships. How much of a partnership has this been?

A: The way the program developed was very much along a collegial and collaborative trajectory, where Michael and I talked [starting in 2006] about a multi-year relationship. We then identified on our end a lead curator, Jodi Hauptman. Michael identified his team, and [High chief curator] David Brenneman took the lead on his end. So we basically sat down and said, “What would make an interesting program?” It’s a little like cooking: “OK, are we going to have a stew? Do we like carrots, onions, parsnips — what are we going to put in this thing?”

So the thought was two really strong, in our local parlance, high-octane exhibitions, that were surrounded by four very focused exhibitions that could drill into a topic, explore an idea, present the work of an artist in a new way and amplify and give texture to these two anchor exhibitions.

Q: As you look at American museums, where do you see the High fitting in?

A: The High has done a phenomenal job over the last 15 or 20 years in emerging from a institution with local and regional significance to an institution of national significance. Ned Rifkin [whom Shapiro succeeded as director in 2000] did an outstanding job of providing the kind of leadership and vision that looked well beyond the region and said, “We can be a player in a larger arena.” And Michael has done a brilliant job in taking that vision and making it even more robust, and has pursued a strategy that has brought a lot of great art to Atlanta.

But he’s also, I think, extremely aware that this strategy of bringing great art to Atlanta has to also over time create a culture of collecting within Atlanta. That’s where you start to get a critical mass of collectors who in a very collegial way compete with each other to develop outstanding collections. That will be the legacy. The exhibitions come and go. Staff comes and goes. The legacy always is the actual works of art that remain in a community.