In a speech in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, Brooklyn Museum Director Anne Pasternak said she believed there was a troubling pattern in the museum’s leadership. Charlotte Burns reports in Science that given recent shake-ups in museum leadership, she believes male museum directors are retiring more often, while women are being fired more frequently. financial times Thursday.
“I’m appalled by what’s happening to leadership in our country, especially in our field,” Patnaik said. “Look at museum leaders who have lost their jobs in recent years: you see men retiring and women being laid off.”
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Pasternak was speaking at the Make a Mark forum, a three-day conference organized by art news According to Julie Brener Davich, Top 200 collector Komal Shah intends to “celebrate female artists and address long-standing gender inequality in the art world.” art news earlier this week. Guests at the forum include museum leaders, auction house staff, film directors, actors and other art world figures.
Pasternak spoke on a panel titled “Reimagining Systems—Rethinking Museum Practice: Acquisition, Curation, and Inclusion of Women Artists,” with other guests including Christophe Cherix of the Museum of Modern Art, Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and curator Sandra Jackson-Dumont, who will serve as director and CEO of the upcoming Lucas Museum until February 2025.
As mentioned in financial timesseveral recent dismissals have drawn more vigilance to the issue. Sasha Suda, director and CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, was fired three years into her contract and was quickly replaced by Daniel Weiss. (Suda later alleged wrongful termination, which the museum denied, and the matter is now being handled in private arbitration.) At the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., director Kim Saget resigned in June 2025 after President Donald Trump tried to fire her on social media. (Saget is now director of the Milwaukee Art Museum.) Then, at the Louvre in Paris, director Lawrence de Carr resigned last month after a tumultuous year that included a high-profile jewelry smash-and-grab that exposed long-standing security issues. Christophe Leribault took her place.
And, as Jackson-Dumont noted on the panel, she hired six women into senior positions at the Lucas Museum during her tenure. Only two pieces remain in the museum. “You’d think we’d blown up the universe. One reporter asked me where I found all these women,” she said.
Burns and her collaborator Julia Halperin also spoke at the forum. Both journalists are best known for their work on the Burns-Halperin Report, which, according to the Forum’s press release, was designed to provide “a concise, data-driven overview of the place of women artists in the contemporary art world.”
Update, 03/13/26 12:09pm: A previous version of this article contained wording similar to that in Charlotte Burns’ report at the Make Their Mark forum. financial times. This previous version does not comply with art newsstandards, which the editors regret. This article has been re-edited accordingly.
