The Lucas Museum of Narrative Artwork has laid off 15 full-time staff, many from the group’s schooling and public programming crew.
The layoffs quantity to 14% of the full-time workers, the museum mentioned Tuesday. A further seven part-time, on-call staff additionally had their roles eradicated, the museum mentioned.
Two individuals conversant in museum operations who requested anonymity out of worry of retaliation described the scene as surprising and chaotic on Thursday morning, when staff have been summoned into morning conferences with human sources, knowledgeable that their jobs had been terminated and given till 2 p.m. to vacate the premises. Private belongings have been being despatched to their properties by courier, the sources mentioned.
The museum’s curator of movie packages, Bernardo Rondeau, was amongst these laid off. He was knowledgeable whereas he was on the Cannes movie competition, and he posted on LinkedIn: “As of today, my role as Curator, Film Programs at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has been made redundant, effective immediately. I’m deeply grateful for the time I’ve spent there and for the many talented people I’ve had the privilege to work with.”
Rondeau, who beforehand served because the founding director of movie packages on the Academy Museum of Movement Photos, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from The Occasions.
A consultant for the museum advised The Occasions that the layoffs have been made “due to a necessary shift of the institution’s focus to ensure we open on time next year.”
“It is a tremendously difficult decision to reorganize roles and to eliminate staff, but the restructure will allow the museum’s teams to work more efficiently to bring the museum to life for the public,” the museum mentioned in a press release.
The Lucas Museum was based by filmmaker George Lucas and his spouse, Mellody Hobson, who looked for a location in San Francisco and Chicago earlier than selecting Exposition Park in Los Angeles. The $1-billion museum broke floor adjoining to the Pure Historical past Museum of Los Angeles County in 2018. The mission skilled its first substantial delay in 2022, as pandemic-related supply-chain points compelled the opening initially scheduled for 2023 to be pushed again to 2025. Earlier this yr its opening was once more pushed again, to 2026.
In February the museum’s director and chief government, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, stepped down after 5 years in cost. The museum mentioned her position was being break up into two positions, with Lucas overseeing “content direction” and former twentieth Century Fox and Paramount Photos chairman and chief government Jim Gianopulos taking up as interim chief government. Jackson-Dumont left on April 1.
Jackson-Dumont has not spoken publicly about her departure and didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark late Monday.
Sources mentioned Lucas has been concerned in curatorial choices however didn’t appear engaged within the schooling and public programming that Jackson-Dumont had championed.
Previous to her arrival in L.A., Jackson-Dumont served because the chairwoman of schooling and public packages at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Artwork. The San Francisco native additionally held schooling and public programming roles on the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Artwork and the Seattle Artwork Museum, the place she labored with Regan Professional, the Lucas Museum deputy director of public packages and social influence who was amongst these laid off final week, in keeping with sources. Professional didn’t reply to a request for remark from The Occasions.
“Education remains a central pillar of the Lucas Museum,” the museum mentioned in a press release Tuesday morning. “One of the main reasons Los Angeles’s Exposition Park was chosen as the location for the museum was its proximity to other museums, USC, and more than 400 schools in a five-mile radius. The importance of education for the museum can be seen by the educational spaces baked into the museum’s design from the beginning, including 10 large classroom spaces, a vast library, and two state-of-the-art theaters. Educational program plans are still in development, and we look forward to sharing more closer to opening.”
