A New Chapter at MoMA: Christophe Cherix Appointed Director

Published on 6 October2025

Christophe Cherix © 2021 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo by Peter Ross.

After three decades under the leadership of Glenn D. Lowry, The Museum of Modern Art in New York —the world’s most influential institution of modern art— enters a new era. This autumn, Christophe Cherix, a Swiss-born curator and long-time head of MoMA’s Department of Drawings and Prints, officially took over as David Rockefeller Director. His appointment marks a generational and philosophical shift within the Museum — one that could see MoMA re-embrace its intellectual and experimental roots, after a period defined by global expansion and institutional branding.

Cherix’s nomination followed an intensive six-month international search and a unanimous vote by the Board of Trustees. Chair Marie-Josée Kravis highlighted his “brilliant curatorial leadership and steady stewardship,” while Board President Sarah Arison praised his “scholarship and internationally respected research.” Together, their statements reflect confidence not only in Cherix’s managerial skill but also in his capacity to bring renewed depth to the Museum’s curatorial identity.

A figure deeply embedded in MoMA’s intellectual fabric, Cherix joined the institution in 2007 and has led the Department of Drawings and Prints since 2013. Before that, he served as curator at the Cabinet des Estampes of the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Geneva, where his work focused on avant-garde and conceptual practices. His academic grounding in works on paper and the histories of conceptualism places him closer to the laboratory of ideas that shaped post-war art than to the corporate arena in which modern museums often find themselves today.

Among his many projects, Cherix has curated major exhibitions that reveal both historical insight and curatorial precision: ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN (2024), Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Institutions (2018, with Connie Butler and David Platzker), Marcel Broodthaers: A Retrospective (2016, with Manuel Borja-Villel), Yoko Ono: One Woman Show(2015), and In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960–1976 (2009). Under his leadership, MoMA has also integrated significant archives and collections — including those of Merrill C. Berman, Seth Siegelaub, Gilbert and Lila Silverman, and the Art & Project/Depot VBVR Collection — reinforcing its position as a global centre for conceptual and archival art.

In contrast to Lowry’s long tenure — marked by architectural expansion, fundraising success, and MoMA’s evolution into a global cultural brand — Cherix’s directorship suggests a more introspective chapter. His curatorial sensibility is less about spectacle and more about structure: the systems, networks, and documents that sustain artistic thought. This intellectual orientation could restore to MoMA a spirit of inquiry that once defined its modernist mission.

As the Museum approaches its centennial, Cherix has stated that his priority is to “support MoMA’s exceptional staff and ensure that their ability to navigate the ever-evolving present continues to thrive.” In that statement lies a subtle promise: that the future of MoMA may depend not on expansion, but on cohesion — a return to the dialogue between art, research, and society that first gave the Museum its authority.

The transition from Lowry to Cherix thus marks more than a change of leadership. It symbolises a shift of tone — from an era of visibility to an era of reflection. For a museum that has long defined the modern, it may be the beginning of a quieter, more analytical modernity: one that listens as much as it leads.