On Sept. 29, the Palm Springs Artwork Museum introduced the collection of a brand new director, the fourth one who would maintain the establishment’s prime 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 makes an attempt to affect the method” on the a part of the museum’s government 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 rigorously written, 1,200-word letter to the complete board warning that “PSAM’s already poor status” could be additional broken by the choice.
Trustee Chair Craig Hartzman firmly defended the appointment. “We’re thrilled,” he mentioned. “It was a very reasonable course of, performed in the fitting method, in session with different museum officers.”
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 alternative. 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 yr, with no prior nonprofit museum expertise. Marino, in a duplicate of the resignation letter obtained by The Occasions, revealed that no different candidates had been interviewed for the put up.
Two unidentified “distinctive candidates” had been in line for aggressive consideration together with Vendredi, the Oct. 6 letter defined, however the search committee “didn’t interview a single outdoors candidate.”
Marino made a degree of emphasizing that Vendredi could properly have confirmed to be the very 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 query.” She lamented that the museum “collectively failed in our fiduciary duty to our stakeholders and neighborhood.”
Reached by phone, Marino declined to touch upon the letter or the mismanaged director’s search.
The put up opened within the spring with the sudden, surprising resignation of Adam Lerner, who had been director for the reason that summer time of 2021. The museum’s prime 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 Nice 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, revenue from the controversial $4.7-million sale of a significant 1979 Helen Frankenthaler portray that had been a bequest of the late Steve Chase, a major 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 )
The April information launch asserting Lerner’s departure additionally publicized formation of a nationwide seek for his successor. Nonetheless, in response to Marino’s letter, the museum didn’t put up the job opening to skilled web sites, together with the museum’s personal, for 4 months. Till then, her committee couldn’t legitimately evaluation doable aspirants. With out funds to rent an expert search agency, Marino defined to trustees that her committee then needed to hustle to determine and entice candidates.
After the August posting of the search, the museum reportedly acquired about 17 resumes, “principally 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 Up to date Artwork, and as an advisor to the acclaimed Stuart Assortment at UCSD, which has commissioned public artwork tasks on the campus since 1981. In January she helmed a profitable search committee for a director of Murals of La Jolla, which at present 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 desire for ending the search with out interviewing different candidates. With no director in place for greater than 5 months, vital museum selections 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 government committee held its recurrently scheduled assembly again dwelling, and she or he wrote that she requested board of trustees chair Craig Hartzman whether or not any votes on the job supply, compensation or an announcement had 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 sturdy 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 alternative. The manager committee, after which the complete board, acted on that data, he mentioned.
Regardless of the case, when the skilled chair of a search committee votes towards the committee’s advice, that’s an enormous pink flag. It alerts a have to decelerate and examine — to not rush within the different course and power by way of a choice. With out consideration of a number of outdoors candidates, the search committee had in impact turn into merely a hiring committee for an in-house nominee.
Following distribution of Marino’s damning letter to the complete board, sources say at the least two extra trustees have tendered their resignations, whereas a 3rd has stepped again from lively participation. Higher late than by no means, however the trustees that stay now have work to do to proper the itemizing ship.
