After 11 years in command, Claudia Gold, director of the Jewish Museum in New York, announced that she was leaving her post.
On Friday, she said she would leave her role as director in June next year, at the end of her contract, marking the end of her tenure that began in 2011. The museum has not announced its next plans, whose board of directors will now form a search committee for a replacement.
In a phone interview, Gould greeted her departure with a mixture of pride and sadness. “We’ve had a lot of success,” she said, “and I feel really good to leave the museum.” “You have created an exceptional team that was not here when I came. When you make the decision to leave, it has to be in a high place.”
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Robert Brozan, chairman of the museum’s board of directors, said: ARTnewsShe and her team have done a tremendous job in moving the mission forward, expanding our audience and making us even more relevant.
The past decade at the Jewish Museum has seen a range of notable exhibitions, including the 2017 Florin Stetheimer Poll, the artist’s first in New York in more than 20 years, and the current exhibition “New York 1962-1964”, which was among the final projects organized by the late curator Germano Celante. These appeared alongside more offbeat shows, including the 2016 blockbuster Isaac Mizrahi and the 2019 show about musician Leonard Cohen. There have also been big acquisitions, including one of 90 works by the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation that also came with a $10 million gift.
It has also seen its share of controversies. The most publicly encountered images were of celebrity curator Jens Hoffman, who was fired in 2017 after the museum received allegations of sexual harassment and bullying. He denied the charges against him.
And in 2020, amid widespread protests following the murder of George Floyd, workers at the Jewish Museum sign a letter That called for more transparency and said nearly all of the workforce was white. The museum disputed the claim regarding the demographics of its staff, stating that about a third of its workers are non-white, and said it strives to be more diverse.
in 2020 editorial to Jewish Telegraph AgencyGold wrote: “As an art museum that strives to promote cultural understanding, and as a special station for Jewish people of all backgrounds, we have a special role to play in standing up against the scourge of white supremacy and anti-Semitism in our society and around the world. We aspire to live up to that role.”
When Gould first joined the Jewish Museum, it was a surprise, given that the person who held the position before her, Joan Rosenbaum, was an expert in Jewish history. By contrast, Gould has been a figure associated with the contemporary art world, managing the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art and the Artists Space, and has been a curator at museums such as the Wexner Center for the Arts and MoMA PS1.
“This was an unexpected job for me,” she said in a phone interview. “I think my next job will be challenging, unexpected and rewarding.”
“Museums should not be static,” she added.
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