NEW YORK, NY.- After 30 years of leading the Museum of Modern Art, during which he moved one of the country’s leading museums from the 20th century into the 21st, Glenn D. Lowry announced Tuesday that he would step down as its director in September 2025.

“It’s the right moment to think about the future of the museum, and I just thought, carpe diem,” Lowry said in an interview. “All the things I set out to do 30 years ago are either accomplished or in play in a very positive way.”

Lowry’s contract was up for renewal in June. He said he felt invited to continue but decided it was time to turn over the reins to the next generation of leadership.

“I didn’t want to be the person who stayed too long,” he said.

The board will start an international search for his successor, the New York museum said. Marie-Josée Kravis, the museum’s chair, said that Lowry’s decision to move on was “by mutual agreement” and that his contract “could have been renewed.”

Replacing Lowry — who turns 70 this month — will not be easy, given his long, successful tenure and because the job description of museum director has grown increasingly complicated in recent years amid economic straits, the coronavirus pandemic and social unrest.

Presiding over a major museum these days requires considerably more than a doctorate in art history and the ability to hire capable curators. Directors must be culturally sensitive diplomats — able to communicate effectively with artists, trustees and potential activists — as well as expert fundraisers, with cultural institutions depending more than ever on private donations.

Lowry also defined the role as closer to that of a corporate CEO — as comfortable talking to the real estate moguls on his board as to the artists who fill the museum’s walls — and looked the part in elegant suits and ascots.

“He’s broadened the whole discussion on the role of the arts and the role of a public institution like MoMA in the community at large,” Kravis said, adding that Lowry had built “a much broader and deeper collection” and “made the museum more open and more of a place for the exchange of ideas.”

Since becoming MoMA’s director in 1995, Lowry oversaw two major renovations, as well as the institution’s merger with the PS 1 Center for Contemporary Art in Long Island City, Queens, and its rethinking of how modern and contemporary art is presented. He increased the endowment to about $1.7 billion from about $200 million, and the annual operating budget grew to about $190 million from about $60 million.

Lowry has also encouraged MoMA’s efforts to bring more diversity to its exhibitions, acquisitions, governance and staffing. In 2015, he worked with Thelma Golden, director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, to introduce a joint fellowship program for rising arts professionals. Golden is often talked about in the art world as a potential successor to Lowry.

“How do you position a museum that is so firmly rooted in the 20th century as a museum of the 21st century?” Lowry said. “I hope we have laid the groundwork for what a 21st-century museum looks like without abandoning our roots.”

While MoMA has weathered its share of protests and controversies (see Leon Black and Jeffrey Epstein), Lowry said these were ultimately healthy for the museum.

“Of course, there are times when you feel under siege,” he said. “We live through a moment when our cultural institutions have been challenged and questioned. That has forced us to think about what really matters, to embrace new and different ideas and to engage audiences in substantial ways.”

Lowry said his immediate plans included a series of lectures at the Louvre in Paris next fall that might result in a book. “It’s an opportunity to meditate on what I’ve learned and thought about for the last 30 years,” he said.

For now, however, he said he remained focused on MoMA, where the museum’s approach to art continues to evolve. And he is proud of what he has accomplished.

“Our responsibility as a work in progress is to learn how to tell multiple stories about modern art,” he said, “not the story of modern art.”

“When I look back at who came to the museum when I was appointed and who comes to the museum today, it is a sea change both in terms of race, ethnicity and age,” he continued. “That’s something the institution should feel collectively proud of.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.