Following a High-Level Exodus, Executive Director of the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg Will Step Down Next Year

November 6, 2023

Anne-Marie Russell, the executive director and chief executive of the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg will step down from her post on March 1, 2024 after a tumultuous year that saw high-level staff resign, move to other institutions, or get fired in a haze of controversy, the Tampa Bay Times reported Sunday.

The museum described Russell’s resignation as a “leadership transition” on their website and noted that the decision to find a replacement for her position, a search which is already underway, was made with the institution’s board of trustees.

While Russell will “focus on collections stewardship and programming while continuing to advise the MFA on special projects” until the beginning of March, her day-to-day responsibilities have been passed to chief curator Stanton Thomas and chief strategy officer Darcy Schuller, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

In recent months the museum has lost multiple top-tier staff members. After the provenance of several works from a touring exhibition of ancient Greek art organized by the museum was called into question by staff at the Denver Art Museum, the show’s curator, Michael Bennett, was put on put on leave. He was fired a month later.

Jorge Vidal, formerly the museum’s senior manager of special projects, left this year to become the executive director at Florida CraftArt and, most recently, Jane Aspinwall, senior curator of photography, and her partner, Paul Churchill, the museum’s lead preparator of exhibits, resigned from their positions.

Russell joined the museum as interim director in September 2022, following the resignation of the former executive director and chief executive, Kristen Shepherd. Her position became official in March 2023.

According to the museum’s website, there are three exhibitions currently on view, all of which end between January and April 2024. The “upcoming exhibitions” page is blank. The museum did not immediately respond to a request for comment.