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Long Beach’s Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), after taking a severely deep cut of $600,000 from its former $4 million budget, had to face yet another tough chop when the museum was forced to remove the position of chief curator from its slate of operations, causing the departure of Cecilia Fajardo-Hill. The museum will, however, continue to operate normally with a curator and an assistant curator still on staff.<\/p>\n
Budget woes stem from the loss of MOLAA’s main beneficiary, Robert Gumbiner, who passed away in 2009, leaving the museum to fend for itself whenever shortfalls come. This includes staff and administration changes, such as the switch of the museum’s president and CEO just over a year ago from former overseer Richard Townsend to current president Stuart Ashman.<\/p>\n
Well-respected internationally, there was no question that Fajardo-Hill’s departure had nothing to do with her competence or performance as a curator.<\/p>\n
“Cecilia does amazing exhibitions,” said MOLAA spokesperson Susan Golden. “Quite frankly, with all of the cuts that have to happen, she would’ve been curtailed in what she could have done.”<\/p>\n
Undoubtedly, Fajardo-Hill was one of the museum’s most bold and ambitious curators, dedicated staunchly to the fact that museums represent academic thought while grasping firmly to MOLAA’s contemporary slant.<\/p>\n
Hailing from the lauded Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) in Miami, Fajardo-Hill’s first exhibition used her own powers to the museum’s strengths, garnering a collection of abstract pieces from CIFO’s hailed collection. Los Angeles Times<\/em> art critic Kristopher Knight called the show the most compelling<\/a> in MOLAA’s (at the time) 13-year history.<\/p>\n Her 2013 abstraction exhibition along with her 2014 proposal\u2014a ground-breaking exhibition of an array of contemporary Latin-American women artists\u2014were in and of themselves expensive; the latter in particular since its industrious scope would have most likely led it to visit institutions internationally.<\/p>\n Interestingly enough, despite rave reviews and respect in both the critical and academic worlds of art (Golden described them as “beautiful shows, beautifully installed”), her exhibitions were strangely unattended compared to some of the more simple, straight-forward exhibitions\u2014ultimately leading to the question of what the museum’s role to the public is.<\/p>\n
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