Trouble is brewing in sunny Palm Springs, California, where an art museum board member has loudly exited her post, firing off a lengthy letter detailing what she says was a faulty process to hire a new director.
The Palm Springs Art Museum (PSAM) has had considerable turnover in the top job. Christine Vendredi, appointed on September 29, is the third person to be named to the post in seven years (in addition to a trustee who briefly served as interm CEO), according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
Trustee Patsy Marino would resign just a week after Vendredi’s hire, claiming in a resignation letter that the committee “did not interview a single outside candidate” even though two “exceptional” candidates were under consideration, the Times reports. She further cited “inappropriate interference and attempts to influence the process” by the museum’s executive committee as well as by individual trustees and other museum staff and donors. She told the board that “PSAM’s already poor reputation” would suffer further as a result of the selection. The Times notes that two more board members have left the 22-member body.
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Turnover has been fairly rapid since Steven Nash, who had previously headed the Dallas Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, retired in 2014. Adam Lerner, who had assumed the post in summer 2021, resigned suddenly in April; he had previously headed the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.
The Palm Springs Art Museum.
Guillaume Goureau, courtesy Palm Springs Art Museum.
Founded in 1938 as the Palm Springs Desert Museum, the institution narrowed its focus to art and changed its name in 2005. A member of the American Alliance of Museums, it also owns two historic buildings and operates a sculpture garden in Palm Desert. It holds about 5,000 sculptures, paintings, prints, and photographs, including works by Marina Abramović, Louise Bourgeois, Mark Bradford, Alexander Calder, John Chamberlain, Antony Gormley, Duane Hanson, Mona Hatoum, Barbara Hepworth, Anish Kapoor, Anselm Kiefer, Henry Moore, Sarah Sze, and Stanley Whitney. The museum holds an endowment of about $20 million, per the Times.
Craig Hartzman, chair of the board, defended Vendredi’s hire, telling the Times that the museum was “thrilled” at the appointment, calling the process fair and saying it was “conducted in the right way.”
The museum did not immediately reply to an emailed request for comment.
Vendredi had worked at the museum for a year and eight months as chief curator, and was interim CEO since April. She had previously worked for 13 years at luxury brand Louis Vuitton, including for nine years as director for art, culture, and heritage, leading major exhibitions and commissions. She earned an art history PhD from the Sorbonne in Paris and one in architectural history from Prague’s Charles University as well as an executive MBA from HEC Paris, but she held no previous museum experience.
In her letter, Marino also claims that the museum failed to publicize the director opening for four months after Lerner’s departure, and that the museum didn’t hire a professional search firm. The museum received fewer than 20 applications after the job was posted in August, said Marino, from people who were “mostly unqualified.”
Marino has served on the board of the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art and as an advisor to the Stuart Collection at University of California San Diego, which commissions public art projects for the campus. She previously was on the committee that found a director of Murals of La Jolla, which has commissioned 17 murals on view there.
Two committee members had interviewed Vendredi by early September, and Marino’s letter indicates that four of the six search committee members strongly wanted to end the search. The museum had been without a director in five months, strongly impacting the institution. Marino writes that she was on a business trip in India when the museum’s executive committee held a meeting. When Marino asked board chair Hartzman whether there was news afoot on the director search, he said no, she claims, but then four days later, with Marino still in India, the museum announced Vendredi’s hire. Hartzman, per the Times, “took strong objection” to Marino’s description of the hiring process in her letter.
The museum was also frequently in the news over several years during a protracted legal battle over a 26-foot-high sculpture of Marilyn Monroe by artist Seward Johnson that was placed in front of the museum. Forever Marilyn captures the classic moment from the Billy Wilder comedy The Seven Year Itch (1955) in which a gust of wind from a subway vent sends the actress’s dress flying into the air. The museum argued that the placement would imply the museum’s approval, and it was decided in 2024 that the museum would move to a city park, Artnet News reported.