In 1968, after a year at Lake Forest College in Illinois, and shortly after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, Armstrong moved to Dijon, France.

[2] Living in an unheated apartment, he spent time at the Louvre, finding the warm museum as welcoming during the Parisian winter as the cool ones had been in earlier summers.

[2] After graduating, Armstrong first sought work as a freelance journalist, but he was soon given a one-year internship at the Whitney Museum of American Art's independent study program.

[1] He returned to the Whitney in 1981, initially as instructor in the independent study program, and he soon became a curator, developing exhibitions and working directly with artists.

[1] Recalling the goal of the Guggenheim's first director, Hilla von Rebay, to create a "temple of the spirit", Armstrong stated early in his tenure at the Guggenheim: "We need to expand on the original optimism and taste for the utopian that guided the museum in its beginnings [while making] sure the parts [of the foundation's global collection] are conjoined and working in harmony with one another.

A Biennial of Creative Video; the BMW Guggenheim Lab, a travelling exhibition, forum and experiment focused on urban living;[4] the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, to work with curators from around the world to identify and acquire artworks from Asia, South America, the Middle East and Africa;[6] and a collaboration with the Robert H.N.

"[6] Exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum in New York under Armstrong included Kandinsky (2009),[8] Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936[9] and Maurizio Cattelan: All (2011).