James Johnson Sweeney

James Johnson Sweeney (1900–1986) was a curator, and writer about modern art. From 1935 to 1946, he was curator for the Museum of Modern Art. He was the second director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, from 1952 to 1960. During his tenure, he expanded the scope of the collection to include abstract expressionist painting as well as sculpture, established the long term loans program in 1953, and the Guggenheim International Awards in 1956. He was also involved in the final years of the construction of the Frank Lloyd Wright designed museum building during which time he had an antagonistic relationship with the architect.

Sweeney collected works by:

• Constantin Brâncuşi
• Alexander Archipenko
• Alexander Calder
• Alberto Giacometti
• David Hayes (sculptor)
• Willem de Kooning
• Jackson Pollock

In the late 1960s, Sweeney was a consultant to the National Gallery of Australia during its establishment to advise on issues concerning the display and storage of art. Subsequently, it also acquired paintings by Pollock and de Kooning. The then Australian Prime minister, John Gorton apparently favoured him as the Gallery's first director, despite his age. He also had significant input into its brutalist design. According to the Gallery's first Director, James Mollison, "the size and form of the building had been determined between Colin Madigan and J.J. Sweeney, and the National Capital Development Commission. I was not able to alter the appearance of the interior or exterior in any way...It's a very difficult building in which to make art look more important than the space in which you put the art".

Born in Brooklyn in 1900 to an Irish-American textile-importing family, Sweeney maintained close ties to Europe throughout his life, residing in Ireland and Paris during intermittent periods. He earned his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University in 1922, and for two years thereafter, he did graduate work in literature at Jesus College, Cambridge University. He then studied for one year each at the Sorbonne and the University of Sienna.

James Johnson Sweeney was Director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art from January 25, 1945 to September 30, 1946. Prior to that, he was a member of the Museum's Acquisition and Advisory Committees. In 1935, he organized African Negro Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, borrowed from collectors in the United States and Europe. A number of European artists lent works to the exhibition from their collections including Henri Matisse, Louis Marcoussis, Tristan Tzara, Jacques Lipchitz, Andre Derain and Andre Lhote. Under a grant from the General Education Board of the Rockefeller Foundation, Walker Evans photographed each individual piece in the exhibition, creating an invaluable record of the works. Six sets of photographs were distributed to black colleges and one set was given to the New York Public Library.

In 1952, he became Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum where he served until 1960.

In 1961, he became Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston where he served for six years and that acted as a Consulting Director. Sweeney’s tenure at the MFAH was characterized by flamboyance and notoriety. As a condition of his employment, a Director’s Acquisition fund was established with which he acquired significant works of contemporary art. He terminated the annual regional exhibitions in an effort to raise the international profile of the MFAH. Known for his innovative installation techniques—he used rods to project paintings from the wall at the Guggenheim—Sweeney utilized the new Cullinan Hall to its best advantage by suspending canvases on wires from the ceiling. During his tenure as Director, he collected heavily in the art of the Americas, adding hundreds of North American and MesoAmerican pieces to the museum’s collection, and even enlisted Brown & Root to construct a road into the Mexican rainforests so that a sixteen-ton Olmec Head could be displayed on the lawn of the MFAH before finding a permanent home at the new Mexican National Museum of Anthropology.

During Sweeney’s tenure as director, Ima Hogg’s personal residence at Bayou Bend was transformed into the MFAH’s house museum for American decorative arts, and he persuaded his longtime friend, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, to create detailed drawings for the planned second phase of additions to the museum that became the Brown Pavilion. He also served as a member of the President’s National Arts Council, and as a member of the Arts Council of Ireland.

In the year following his departure from the MFAH, Sweeney continued to work as a consultant to supervise the architectural planning process for the museum. During the 1970s he acted as interim Director of the National Gallery in Canberra, he chaired the executive committee of the Israel Museum, he became President of the International Association of Art Critics, and he served as an advisory editor for Partisan Review. He also continued a lifelong career in art criticism, completing a book on Chillida shortly before his death in 1986.