As head of the Museum of Modern Art since 1995, Lowry has presided over the museum's massive expansion—and courted plenty of controversy along the way.

Born in New York City and raised in Massachusetts, Lowry was a dark horse candidate for the MoMA job when he was picked in 1995, but he got the nod after five other museum directors passed. Previously, Lowry had been in charge of the Art Gallery of Ontario, hardly a comparable institution. But he impressed the MoMA's trustees with his sharp financial acumen and the budget cuts he'd carried out, which were particularly impressive in light of the blockbuster shows he was still able to stage. Since taking over, Lowry has overseen several of the most profound changes to affect the institution. In 1999, he teamed up with Alanna Heiss to merge MoMA with P.S.1. He also redirected MoMA's permanent collection away from older works in favor of younger, edgier work. In recent years, the museum has sold enormously valuable pieces such Picasso's 1913 Man with a Guitar, using the proceeds to acquire newer works such as a Francis Bacon triptych and work by the youthful talents like Elizabeth Peyton, Julie Mehretu, and Eve Sussman. Most notably, of course, Lowry has presided over the museum's giant expansion, buying the Swingline stapler factory in Sunnyside, Queens to house the collection until the Yoshio Taniguchi-designed building was completed in 2005, just in time to celebrate the institution's 75th anniversary.

The museum's $858 million expansion, which created 120,000 square feet of new gallery space, has been the defining and most dramatic episode of the Lowry era. While it may look good from the outside—a "lustrous building," according to the New Yorker—some critics say it feels like a soulless corporate machine. But Lowry has also been taken to task for plenty of other deeds, some dating back as far as his first few weeks on the job, when he infuriated curators by changing the museum's management structure. He's also been sharply criticized for the way he's rigidly compartmentalized different media—displaying video with video, paintings with paintings, sculpture with sculpture—whereas most contemporary gallerists mix and match. And then there's the matter of his outsized pay package, which hasn't exactly endeared him to his critics.

Lowry and his wife Susan live rent-free in an apartment in Museum Tower that is owned by MoMA. [Image via Getty]