Daniel H. Weiss, president of the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork since 2015 and CEO since 2017, will step down from his position in June 2023. A press release from the museum didn’t specify a motive for his supposed departure. Weiss turned 65 earlier this month.
Weiss, a medieval scholar, joined the Met from Haverford Faculty in Pennsylvania, the place he was president and professor of artwork historical past from 2013 to 2015. Beforehand, he was president of Lafayette Faculty and a professor, division chair, and dean at Johns Hopkins College. Throughout his tenure on the museum, he helped elevate over $1.5 billion in non-public assist and led the establishment by the turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic. Beneath Weiss’s management, says the Met’s assertion, the museum “reengineered its funds to allow the Met to retain workers all through the five-and-a-half-month closure interval.” (The museum laid off 79 staff and furloughed 181 others throughout the pandemic; 93 staff accepted voluntary retirements. The cuts slashed the Met’s workforce by 20% in 2020.)
Together with Director Max Hollein, whom Weiss introduced on in 2018, the outgoing president and CEO is credited with ushering in a sequence of measures associated to the museum’s “13 Commitments on Anti-Racism and Range,” issued in the summertime of 2020 amid nationwide protests towards racist violence. Amongst these measures was the hiring of the Met’s first-ever Chief Range Officer, Lavita McMath Turner, appointed that November.
Additionally in 2020, the museum introduced the top of unpaid internships, securing a $5 million donation from artwork philanthropist Adrienne Arsht to cowl intern salaries. The shift to paid internships was a milestone second for the museum, whose personal prime staffers are generously compensated. In keeping with the museum’s most up-to-date 990 filings, Weiss’s complete compensation from 2020 to 2021 was $1.28 million, and Hollein’s compensation was $1.1 million. (Each executives took a 20% pay lower throughout the pandemic.)
Weiss additionally oversaw the implementation of a extra controversial coverage: a $25 admission payment for out-of-state grownup guests, reversing the museum’s earlier “pay-as-you-wish” construction for all guests.
Within the coming months, the Met’s board of trustees will undertake a evaluation of the museum’s present management construction. It can contemplate whether or not to switch Weiss or eliminate its unconventional administration mannequin, put in place in 2017, by which the museum’s director reviews to the president and CEO.
“Main the Met has been a rare honor,” Weiss stated. “The Museum is an intergenerational establishment in service to the world, and I’ve felt that profoundly from my first day right here.”
