On Sept. 29, the Palm Springs Artwork Museum introduced the collection of a brand new director, the fourth one that would maintain the establishment’s high administrative place in simply seven years.
One week later, the chair of the search committee tasked with filling that place, trustee Patsy Marino, resigned from the museum’s board citing “inappropriate interference and attempts to influence the process” on the a part of the museum’s govt committee, particular person trustees and different unidentified museum employees and donors. To this point, two extra of twenty-two trustees have adopted Marino out the door, after she addressed a fastidiously written, 1,200-word letter to the complete board warning that “PSAM’s already poor reputation” could be additional broken by the choice.
Trustee Chair Craig Hartzman firmly defended the appointment. “We’re thrilled,” he mentioned. “It was a very fair process, conducted in the right way, in consultation with other museum officials.”
The museum’s chief curator Christine Vendredi, former administrator of the company artwork assortment of French luxurious trend home Louis Vuitton, was named the museum’s director. She was an unconventional selection. Vendredi holds a PhD in artwork historical past from the Sorbonne in Paris and one in architectural historical past from Charles College in Prague. She joined the employees solely final 12 months, with no prior nonprofit museum expertise. Marino, in a duplicate of the resignation letter obtained by The Instances, revealed that no different candidates have been interviewed for the submit.
Two unidentified “exceptional candidates” had been in line for aggressive consideration together with Vendredi, the Oct. 6 letter defined, however the search committee “did not interview a single outside candidate.”
Marino made some extent of emphasizing that Vendredi could nicely have confirmed to be one of the best candidate, however that the bungled technique of merely elevating the chief curator to the directorship behind the scenes additionally did a disservice to the brand new director, because it “put her legitimacy in question.” She lamented that the museum “collectively failed in our fiduciary responsibility to our stakeholders and community.”
Reached by phone, Marino declined to touch upon the letter or the mismanaged director’s search.
The submit opened within the spring with the sudden, sudden resignation of Adam Lerner, who had been director for the reason that summer time of 2021. The museum’s high administrative workplace has had a revolving door for the reason that 2014 retirement of Steven Nash, revered former deputy director of the Dallas Museum of Artwork and the Wonderful Arts Museums of San Francisco, who went on to steer Berkeley’s Richard Diebenkorn Basis. Since then, three administrators — plus a museum trustee who acted as interim CEO for 9 months — have averaged lower than three years within the demanding job.
With a modest present endowment of round $20 million, the Palm Springs Artwork Museum has lengthy confronted daunting monetary hurdles. Throughout a greater than year-long closure from the brutal COVID-19 pandemic, earnings from the controversial $4.7-million sale of a serious 1979 Helen Frankenthaler portray that had been a bequest of the late Steve Chase, a main donor for whom the principle museum gallery is known as, was inappropriately put towards overlaying working prices.
The Palm Springs Artwork Museum has about 12,000 works in its assortment
(Guillaume Goureau / Palm Springs Artwork Museum )
After the August posting of the search, the museum reportedly obtained about 17 resumes, “mostly unqualified,” the letter mentioned, earlier than direct solicitations to skilled associates within the area finally surfaced two potential names. Marino, who lives in each Palm Springs and La Jolla, has served on a number of nonprofit boards, together with the San Diego Museum of Modern Artwork, and as an advisor to the acclaimed Stuart Assortment at UCSD, which has commissioned public artwork initiatives on the campus since 1981. In January she helmed a profitable search committee for a director of Murals of La Jolla, which at the moment has 17 commissioned murals on view across the seaside village.
By early September, although, two search committee members had interviewed Vendredi, and the letter says 4 of the six members expressed a powerful choice for ending the search with out interviewing different candidates. With no director in place for greater than 5 months, essential museum choices starting from employees hiring to fundraising points had come to a digital halt. The committee tally was reported to trustee management. On the finish of the month, Marino was in India on a enterprise journey when the the museum’s govt committee held its usually scheduled assembly again dwelling, and he or she wrote that she requested board of trustees chair Craig Hartzman whether or not any votes on the job provide, compensation or an announcement have been deliberate.
“He replied ‘no’,” the letter says. 4 days later, whereas Marino was nonetheless overseas, Vendredi’s appointment was introduced.
In a short phone interview, Hartzman took robust objection to Marino’s characterization of the method within the letter, particularly noting that 4 of the six search committee members had accredited the ultimate selection. The chief committee, after which the complete board, acted on that information, he mentioned.
Regardless of the case, when the skilled chair of a search committee votes towards the committee’s advice, that’s an enormous crimson flag. It indicators a must decelerate and examine — to not rush within the different course and drive by way of a call. With out consideration of a number of exterior candidates, the search committee had in impact turn out to be merely a hiring committee for an in-house nominee.
