US Museums Struggling to Find New Directors

November 22 2021

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

Artnet.com have published an interesting article on the fact that there are a growing number of vacant Directorship positions going in Museums in the US. The article has shown that there are currently around two dozen museums actively looking for Directors, including the likes of J. Getty Paul Getty Trust (pictured), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to smaller ones that serve as pillars for their local communities, such as the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, and the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut.

The article points at the potential reasons for this:

The question now is whether there are enough qualified—and, perhaps more importantly, interested—candidates to fill these roles at a time when the job of museum director is considerably less desirable than it used to be.

The article also points towards other issues, including the perceived difficulty of balancing the 'wealth gaps' between board members and staff.

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