INDIANAPOLIS – The president of The Indianapolis Museum of Art in Newfields resigned Wednesday, days after the agency apologized for a mailing list seeking a new director who would maintain the museum’s “traditional, core, white art audience.”
The museum’s board of trustees and board of governors said in a public letter that Charles Venable’s resignation “is necessary for Newfields to become the cultural institution our community needs and deserves.” It is said that CFO Jerry Wise will serve as interim president.
In the post report, the museum said it was looking for a director to attract a broader and more diverse audience while retaining the museum’s traditional, core art-white art audience. ‘The post sparked letters from a group of Newfields employees and art leaders in the community to thank Venable.
Venable said the decision to use ‘white’ was deliberate in showing that the museum would not abandon its existing audience because it strives for more diversity. This was a point on the fourth page of the six-page job description.
“I think the fact that you can read that one sentence and read it now as a single sentence or a sub-sentence, I can certainly understand and regret that it can be taken that way,” he told The Indianapolis Star. “That was definitely not the intention at all.”
In addition to the resignation, the boards have announced a series of steps that will be taken.
“We will engage an independent committee to conduct a thorough review of Newfields’ leadership, culture and our own Board of Trustees and Board of Governors, with the aim of representing our community and its full diversity inclusively,” he said. .
Newfields will also expand ‘curatorial representations’ of exhibitions and programming of, for and by black and Latino people, women, people with disabilities, the LGBTQ community and’ other marginalized identities’, ‘the letter reads.
The museum will also include additional free or reduced fee days to increase its access, forming an advisory committee made up of artists, activists and members of color communities ‘whose primary function is to hold leadership accountable for these goals’, and still against racist training for its boards, staff and volunteers.
Newfields is the 152-acre campus of the Indianapolis Museum that includes gardens and an arts and nature park.