The president of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields stepped down Wednesday after the institution generated an uproar with a job notice that said it was seeking a director to maintain its “traditional, core, white art audience.”
The museum’s board of trustees and board of governors said in a statement that Charles Venable’s resignation was accepted Wednesday morning.
“We are sorry,” said the statement. “We have made mistakes. We have let you down.”
Jerry Wise, the museum’s chief financial officer, will serve as interim president, the board said.
The job listing set off a firestorm after it came to light Friday. The racially incendiary phrasing appeared on the fourth page of a six-page job description but was scrubbed by Saturday morning, the Indianapolis Star reported.
The museum also issued an apology Saturday. “We deeply regret that in our job description, in our attempt to focus on building and diversifying our core audience, our wording was divisive rather than inclusive,” the museum said in a statement.
In July, a curator brought on to help diversify the museum’s collections quit her job at the gallery, describing a “toxic” environment where discrimination was rampant, according to the Star.
“We are ashamed of Newfields’ leadership and of ourselves,” the museum’s board said in its statement Wednesday. “We have ignored, excluded, and disappointed members of our community and staff. We pledge to do better.”
