In a recently held internal all-staff meeting, Neal Benezra reportedly announced that he will step down from his role as director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) after 19 years at the museum.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Benezra will formally leave the museum once a new director is hired and plans to assist in the search process.
During his tenure, Benezra led the museum’s 2013-2016 expansion, doubling the exhibit space, and spearheaded many acquisition projects like the Campaign for Art, which added more than 3,000 gifts of modern and contemporary artworks to the museum.
This resignation announcement comes after a rocky year at the Sa Francisco institution and follows the recent resignations of several high-ranking employees. The museum has been criticized for its accumulation of layoffs and furloughs during the coronavirus pandemic and has been accused of fostering a culture of racism and structural inequities. As SFMOMA faced a projected $7 million deficit, workers denounced high executive salaries, including Benezra’s.
In May, while Black Lives Matter protests swept the country, the museum came under scrutiny after deleting a comment from a Black employee, Taylor Brandon, on its Instagram post featuring a Glenn Ligon artwork. (Benezra issued an apology after the incident.) Months later, former senior curator Gary Garrels resigned following backlash for a controversial comment about collecting art by white men.
In an interview with the Chronicle, Benezra says that his decision to step down preceded last year’s events.
“Succession planning is good governance, and it’s something that the board leaders and I have been talking about since the fall of 2019. This was not a sudden decision we came to,” Benezra told the Chronicle.
