Speed Art Museum CEO Ghislain d’Humières to leave at end of March
Speed Art Museum's CEO Ghislain d’Humières is leaving the museum to return to his home country of France to care for his ailing father, according to a museum statement.
d’Humières was not available Wednesday to discuss his decision.
Martha Slaughter, chair of the Speed's board of directors, said the leadership has known about his father's health since last summer but a recent decline has made it more important for d’Humières to be there.
Slaughter credited d’Humières for his fundraising acumen and leading the museum’s $60 million expansion and renovation that came in on budget and opened on schedule last year on March 12.
“His enthusiasm has been infectious,” she said.
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"During his tenure, we accomplished things that had never been accomplished at the Speed before and will never be duplicated again," said Bruce Merrick, who was board chairman until Slaughter's term began last fall and is chairman of Dant Clayton Corporation.
d’Humières will remain at the Speed Art Museum through the end of March. Stephen Reily, a longtime civic and business leader and museum supporter, will assume the role of interim director, according to a museum statement. The Speed has an $8 million budget and endowment of $49 million.
Reily served on the museum's board for 10 years, including chairing its long-range planning committee and its curatorial committee. He currently is chair of the board of directors for the national arts grant-making organization Creative Capital Foundation and board of trustees’ member of New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art.
In an email message, Reily said that he wanted to wait until he began working in the interim position to make any comments.
d’Humières, the sixth director of Kentucky’s largest museum that was founded in 1927, joined the museum in September 2013. He oversaw the last big push for the museum's expansion and renovation and the transformation of the museum’s administration and its governance.
He joined the museum just months after it had announced an $18 million donation from the family of the late philanthropist and Brown-Forman chairman Owsley Brown II, who died in 2011 and had been chair of the building committee and honorary chairman of the Speed’s capital campaign. The donation allowed the museum to carry out three of the construction phases it had mapped out under its master expansion project. Those phases originally would have taken the museum years five to 10 years beyond 2016 to achieve.
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During the summer of 2013, d’Humières said he wanted this museum to be a place that would welcome diverse populations including economically disadvantaged residents. He also talked about working with other artists and arts groups in different disciplines in the community, including dance and music.
At the Speed, d’Humières also worked to raise additional funds for the expansion and to pay for site-specific works for the new building.
"The task he faced was daunting, and he wasn't going to be denied," Merrick said. “I don’t think I’ve ever worked with anybody in the nonprofit work or in my business career who was as passionate and consumed by his work as Ghislain.”
d’Humières steered the staff that remained after Charles Venable unexpectedly left the museum’s leadership post in September 2012 to become CEO of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. d’Humière added many new staff members, including three new curators. And he merged the education, communication and marketing departments to create a Department of Engagement.
Slaughter said the board is very confident having Reily at the museum’s helm for the interim and will begin to plan a search for a new leader after it completes a long-term strategic plan it’s now working on with a consultant.
“We’re in no rush because we want to translate this strategic plan into an operational plan that’s tied to the budget," she said.
She said the leadership knows that any leader is going to put his or her own touch on things.
“But we believe it’s in the Speed’s best interest to keep going forward with this plan,” she said. “We’re going to stay the course.”
Reach reporter Elizabeth Kramer at 502-582-4682 and ekramer@courier-journal.com. Follow her on Twitter @arts_bureau and on Facebook at Elizabeth Kramer - Arts Writer.