UTAH MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS CUTS STAFF; KEMPNER CURATOR TO DIRECT SALINA ART CENTER
Effective last week, the University of Utah museum cut three of its fifteen full-time positions and reduced the working hours of remaining full-time staff by 20 percent, reports the Salt Lake Tribune.
“We are facing challenging times but felt it was important to position ourselves as well as possible going forward,” said Gretchen Dietrich, the museum’s interim director. “It’s unimaginably unfortunate.”
Staffers who were let go are include the curator of New World and Pacific Islander art, a specialist in collections and installation, and the museum’s operations manager. The rest of the twelve-member staff will be paid to work thirty-two hours per week instead of forty.
Despite grim budget news, Dietrich, who took over after former director David Dee’s resignation in April, said the museum will forge ahead with plans for fifteen installations and exhibition projects slated for the 2010–2011 fiscal year. “We’re responsive to the current economic climate in which we’re all living, but still going forward with a by-no-means-reduced fleet of programming and projects,” she said.
In other news, Christopher Byron Cook, curator of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, will succeed Heather Ferrell as director of the Salina Art Center in Kansas, according to the Salina Journal_. Ferrell left the position nearly a year ago to become executive director of Salt Lake Art Center in Salt Lake City.
“One of the things we liked a lot about Chris was his extensive reach with the artist community, both regionally and nationally,” said Sydney Soderberg, president of the Art Center board. “The staff feels strongly that they can follow the direction of a person who has that strong art and artist background.”
The Salina Art Center, founded in 1978, is a noncollecting contemporary art museum and education center. More than thirty-five thousand people participate in the center’s exhibitions, films, and programs each year.
