Charles Venable Steps Down as Head of Indianapolis Museum of Art
Charles Venable, president of Newfields, the campus that is home to the Indiana Museum of Art, has resigned after an insensitive job posting by the institution on a recruiting site drew public outrage. Venable earlier this week edited and then apologized for the January advertisement on the website of search firm m/Oppenheim, for a director capable of maintaining the IMA’s “traditional, core, white art audience” while seeking to reach new, diverse audiences.
The posting, which went relatively unnoticed until February 12, sparked a public call for Venable’s resignation, released February 16, signed by eighty-five Newfields employees and members of its board of governors; additionally, more than two thousand artists, arts leaders, and former museum employees, ranging from the chief curator of the Andy Warhol Museum to a woman who described herself as the “mother of biracial, art-loving