PHOENIX ART MUSEUM’S DIRECTOR STEPS DOWN

James Ballinger, Phoenix Art Museum’s director, is stepping down from his post after forty years at the museum, according to Allyson Gerrard in the Downtown Devil. Under his tenure as director, the museum added ten thousand pieces to its collection. He personally organized fifty of the five hundred shows mounted by the museum during his career. “The physical and programmatic growth of the Phoenix Art Museum during Jim’s tenure has been nothing short of astonishing, and in my view, directly reflects Phoenix’s evolution during the same time period,” said Jaime Dempsey, the deputy director of the Arizona Commission on the Arts.