Glenn D. Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, overlooking the sculpture garden.CreditRichard Perry/The New York Times

Glenn D. Lowry, who will soon begin his 20th year running the Museum of Modern Art, has a longstanding practice of taking time each week to visit artists’ studios. Which is why he could be found one recent morning along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, watching the glass-blowing sculptor Josiah McElheny and assistants fashion a vessel from molten lumps, a process almost Elizabethan in its rituals.

“It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Lowry said. “It’s balletic, the way they move and work together.”

During his ambitious tenure at the museum’s helm, Mr. Lowry has choreographed a highly complex ballet of his own, one that has not always gone as smoothly. The most visible, and often most divisive, part of this dance has involved real estate, the museum’s frequent moves to carve space for itself from the dense heart of Midtown.

And its latest expansion, which begins Tuesday with the first stage of the controversial demolition of its architecturally distinctive neighbor, the former American Folk Art Museum, has brought to a boil many long-simmering complaints from art critics, artists, architects and patrons not only about the museum’s overall direction but also about its director.

Glenn D. Lowry, kneeling, with Luis Pérez-Oxamas, curator of the Lygia Clark show that was being installed at MoMA last week. CreditRichard Perry/The New York Times

As the number of visitors has more than doubled during Mr. Lowry’s tenure — to almost three million annually — there have been complaints from veteran patrons that the museum has grown too fast and lost much of its soul in courting the crowd.

Mr. Lowry is himself sometimes personally blamed for the museum’s image as a place that has become cold and corporate, that exercises its power too blithely and that is often out of touch with the sensibilities of contemporary artists. And within the museum, his forceful reshaping of a once-balkanized museum known for its powerful chief curators has resulted in complaints that the director has consolidated too much power around himself, sometimes making it difficult for curators to organize shows they think are important.

Over several hours of interviews recently, Mr. Lowry, 59, by turns resolute, reflective and cautiously defensive, sought to play down the long-term impact of the folk art building demolition on both the museum and himself. “Obviously I’m deeply empathetic to the feelings that that has elicited from a community we really care about,” he said. “On the other hand, sometimes you have to make really tough decisions if you think they’re right.” The decision has occasioned some “dark nights of the soul,” he said, but added: “If one’s tenure boils down to a construction program then something fundamental has been missed. And what I think is essential is the collection, the programs and the people.”....Continue Reading

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