Los Angeles-the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, partly founded by Star Wars Filmmaker George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson have dismissed 14% of full-time staff-15 employees and seven part-time employees. Most cuts were in the teams of learning and engagement and museum services, the organization said in a statement shared with Hyperallergic.
“Het is een enorm moeilijke beslissing om de rollen te reorganiseren en personeel te elimineren, maar de herstructurering zal de teams van het museum in staat stellen efficiënter te werken om het museum tot leven te brengen voor het publiek,” las de verklaring, en voegde eraan toe dat het ontspannen personeel ontslagvergoedingen heeft ontvangen en dat het museum “doorgaan met aannemen in de nieuwe rollen in aannemen in de nieuwe rollen in huren in de nieuwe rollen in huren in de nieuwe rollen in aannemen in The new roles in renting in the new roles in accepting in the new roles in renting in the new roles in accepting in the new roles in renting. Strategic operational areas ”pending the opening of 2026.
The Lucas Museum specified no reason for the cutbacks, in contrast to other institutions in the United States that recently announced dismissals, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Guggenheim Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, who all cited financial challenges.
Anonymous sources quoted in the Los Angeles TimesWho reported the news for the first time, described a ‘shocking and chaotic’ scene last Thursday 15 May when the affected employees were drawn in the morning meetings with human resources and were given until 2 p.m. to leave the building.
Among the affected, the curator of film programs of the museum, Bernardo Rondeau, heard of his termination while he was in Cannes for the annual Film Festival.
“From today, my role as curator film programs in the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is made superfluous, immediately in force,” Rondeau wrote in a post LinkedIn. “I am deeply grateful for the time I spent there and for the many talented people with whom I had a privilege to work with.”
A former employee who recently left the museum and who asked for anonymity, said Hyperallergic That the dismissed pointed to deeper problems at the institution. “My all the time there it was incredibly dysfunctional,” they said. “It is very disappointing how much chance there is, both with the excellence of the staff and the resources.”
Much of that dysfunction, they said, stemmed from a ‘core discrepancy between what George [Lucas] Thinks that a museum is and what leadership thinks it is. ‘
Despite the sudden nature of the dismissals, the former employee was not surprised. ‘[Lucas] Does not believe in museum education … I don’t know how to dismiss everyone who does that work a year before you are opened without communicating to the world that we don’t care, “said the former employee.
The museum is mainly funded by Lucas and Hobson, who considered possible sites in San Francisco and Chicago before they settled in La’s Exposition Park, all the home base of the California African American Museum, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles and the California Science Center. The site is also surrounded by more than 400 schools in a radius of five miles, as the museum stated in its recent statement, a draw for the organization that gave the indicated dedication to public education. Hyperallergic The museum has asked whether the cutbacks on the learning and engagement teams will influence this mission.
Construction started in the $ 1 billion project in 2018, with pandemic related setbacks that pushed the opening date from 2023 to 2025 and finally until 2026 from earlier this year. Designed by Ma Yansong/Mad Architects, the biomorphic structure of five floors appears to be a futuristic, alien spacecraft surrounded by landscape designs, including gardens on the roof of Mia Lehrer.
De 40.000-delige collectie van het echtpaar omvat het hoog-tot-lage spectrum, van werken van traditionele beeldende kunst van Edgar Degas, Ernie Barnes en Norman Rockwell tot strips door ondergrondse kunstenaar Robert Crumb, originele “Winnie-the-Pooh” watercolors door EH Shepard, en sets en rekwisieten van invloeden op films, niet beperkt tot Lucas’s, Star Wars Franchise.
The museum has made since its foundation Various remarkable acquisitionsIncluding “Fish Market” by Alice Neel (1947); Frida Kahlo’s “Self -portrait dedicated to Dr.esser” (1940); the archives for Judy Baca’s monumental mural “The Great Wall of Los Angeles” (1976-1984); “The Triumph of Galatea” (ca. 1650), a painting attributed to Artemisia Gentilesschi and purchased on an 1820 Christie’s auction for $ 2.13 million; and Robert Colescott’s “George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page from a American History Textbook” (1975), for which the $ 15.3 million paid at an auction by Sotheby in 2021.
Last February the museum announced that his inaugural director and CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont would resign after five years, and that her role would be divided between Lucas, who would supervise ‘Content direction’, and former 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures Chairman and CEO Jim Gianopulos. Jackson-Dumont nor Rondeau responded to requests for comments.
