The big surprise on Monday was the announcement by the Miami Art Museum that MAM Director Terry Riley, who came to the museum just three and a half years ago, will step down immediately as director just one week after the museum unveiled the design for its new building. On Monday night Riley sent out a “Dear Friends” e-mail to clarify his resignation.
First he pointed out that the Herzog & de Meuron design for the new building had been “enthusiastically received by the trustees, the staff and the community at large” and that the museum “has met all the requirements for receipt of $100 million in County-issued bond money. The project is on budget, thanks to the efforts of all concerned.”
But in light of some reporting Monday on the Miami Herald website about fund raising problems for the new museum, I think some lines from his next paragraph were the most interesting ones.
Every museum director brings certain areas of expertise to the task at hand. For the last four years, I have been lucky to be able to use the experience I gained as an architect, as a curator of architecture and design, and as a member of the team that helped the Museum of Modern Art complete its $850 million expansion and renovation in 2004 and to bring the Miami Art Museum’s project to this point.
So did the Museum’s board decide that in these difficult times they needed someone who counted aggressive fund raising as among his “areas of expertise”? Did nervous trustees cast an eye on the money bind that has hit the Cleveland Museum of Art? As a last resort, that museum recently went to court, successfully, to get permission to dip into earnings from four funds intended by their donors for art purchases to complete its still unfinished $350 million expansion, a project $138 million short of the goal. Like a lot of museums this year, in April MAM announced a ten percent budget cut to deal with a drop in corporate sponsorships and private philanthropy. It’s a very tough time to be beating the bushes for the money to finance an ambitious new building.
Be that as it may, Riley told the New York Times Monday night that problems with the new building project had nothing to do with his resignation.
“If this project was in some sort of trouble or in some sort of holding pattern I would be here till the thing got righted and got done,” he said. “This is a project with verifiable legs.”
So was Riley pushed or did he jump? Did he just want to go back to his architectural practice? Or did he decide he was sick of the fund raising rat race and now was a good time to get away? Or all of the above?