The Museum of Modern Art in New York announced the appointment of Marie-Josée Kravis as the new chair of its board of trustees, effective July 1, 2021. She will succeed Leon Black, who stepped down in March due to allegations over his financial links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Kravis has been a member of the board of trustees since 1994 and previously served as president from 2005 to 2018. She is married to billionaire venture capitalist Henry Kravis, co-founder of the global investment company Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Their charitable contributions include $100 million both to Rockefeller University to fund the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Research Building and to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to create the Center for Molecular Oncology.
The Kravis’ generosity has also included a donation of $1 million to former president Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017. Henry Kravis also gave more than $300,000 to the Republican National Committee during the 2016 presidential election cycle.
Marie-Josée Kravis also serves as vice chair of the board of trustees at the Hudson Institute, a politically conservative think tank based in Washington, DC, and a highly influential force in GOP politics. From 1971 to 1984, she served as executive director of the Hudson Institute of Canada and a consultant of its New York branch.
Leadership choices and board member selections at the museum have been brought into question in recent months. Members of Strike MoMA described Black’s replacement by Kravis as “a game of musical chairs.”
“For us, the issue is not one bad board member. They are all part of the same interlocking directorate whose violence is accumulated in the very structure of the museum and the power grid of the city surrounding it,” the group said. “Kravis is deeply involved in a network of think tanks that make up the intellectual and operational infrastructure of the global ruling class.”
Strike MoMA added that the think tank that Kravis is affiliated with has bestowed awards to conservative figures including Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ronald Regan, former Vice President Mike Pence, and Paul Ryan.
“At this level of the power elite, ideological lines between liberals and Trumpists break down,” the group continued. “It is about consolidating ruling class governance in the face of heightening contradictions.”
“The election of Kravis to the head of the board makes the stakes of striking MoMA all the more clear for our communities and movements for collective liberation,” Strike MoMA added.
