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Lower than a month after asserting its opening date, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Artwork advised workers that chief curator Pilar Tompkins Rivas is leaving the museum this week.
“There aren’t any speedy plans to switch Pilar’s position as Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Curatorial and Collections,” wrote interim Chief Govt Jim Gianopulos in an electronic mail obtained by The Occasions. “George Lucas will proceed to supervise curatorial content material and path.”
Rivas didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The $1-billion Lucas Museum, which stays on monitor to open on Sept. 22, 2026, issued a press release that stated, “We thank Pilar Tompkins Rivas for her arduous work over the past 5 years, which has been instrumental in making ready the museum for its opening. We want her nicely in her future endeavors.”
Rivas’ departure comes 9 months after former museum director and CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont stepped down from her position. Jackson-Dumont didn’t remark publicly about her departure, however the museum stated in a press release on the time that her determination was primarily based on a “new organizational design” that may cut up her job into two positions, with Lucas liable for content material path and Gianopulos, the previous chairman and CEO of twentieth Century Fox and Paramount Photos, assuming the CEO title till a everlasting one might be discovered.
Three months after that, the museum laid off 15 full-time staff, many from the group’s schooling and public programming group — amounting to 14% of the full-time workers. A further seven part-time, on-call staff additionally misplaced their jobs. At the moment, two staff, who requested to stay nameless out of worry of retaliation, described the layoffs as surprising and chaotic.
In 2020, the Lucas Museum was touted for appointing six girls — 5 of whom have been girls of shade — to management roles. That quantity didn’t embrace Jackson-Dumont. With Rivas now not in her job, solely two girls employed at the moment stay: Larissa Gentile, managing director of particular tasks, and Erica Neal, director of computing and infrastructure.
“I’m an advocate for variety, fairness, inclusion and accessibility, that’s an enormous a part of who I’m,” Jackson-Dumont advised The Occasions in 2020. “However after I’m hiring, I’m on the lookout for one of the best and most certified candidates — and that was them.”
Rivas is understood for her connection to Los Angeles and its numerous communities. She was previously the director and chief curator on the Vincent Value Artwork Museum at East Los Angeles School. Previous to that she labored as coordinator of curatorial initiatives on the Los Angeles County Museum of Artwork. Her resume additionally contains curatorial and undertaking coordinator positions at Santa Monica’s 18th Road Arts Heart, the UCLA Chicano Research Analysis Heart and the Claremont Museum of Artwork.
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