Lowry became MoMA director in 1995, then a forty-year-old Islamic art scholar, and he will leave next year as someone who turned the role into something closer to that of a CEO. His tenure has seen the museum’s endowment increase to $1.7b, he has embarked on extensions that have doubled the exhibition spaces (the final stages of its $400m expansion and renovation led to a four-month closure of the institution this summer) and, in 2000, he brought PS1 into the MoMA stable. ‘I have not had a good night’s sleep in pretty close to 25 years,’ he joked. There remains an operation budget shortfall of $110m a year, and commercial revenues from retail and restaurants are stagnant. Lowry has also had to weather protests this year on the board’s connections to the fossil fuel industry and staff unrest over its silence on the Israel-Hamas war. Kicking off retirement, Lowry will embark on a lecture series at the Louvre in Paris, with an eye to publishing a book. “It’s the right moment to think about the future of the museum and I just thought, carpe diem,” Lowry told CNN. “I didn’t want to be the person who stayed too long.”