Alleging a 'hostile' work environment, current and former DIA staff call on director to be removed

DETROIT - A group consisting of current and former employees at the Detroit Institute of Art plan on releasing a list of demands following reports of a hostile work environment in the coming days. However, on Monday they published their first request:

"We ask that Salvador Salort-Pons be removed from his role as Director, President & Chief Executive Officer and any other involvement at the Detroit Institute of Arts by August 31, 2020"

The demand, which was labeled in a statement from the group DIA Staff Action that was tweeted out this morning, is the result of consultation with "multiple current and former colleagues of the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), local activists, community organizers, mentors across the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sector, and national organizations to prepare community demands for the DIA."

Citing reports in the New York Times and the Detroit Free Press, DIASA says they are responding to a "hostile and chaotic work culture" that's impacted the service the museum has to offer.

Additionally, in a blog post shared on Medium.com, the former digital experience designer on June 15, Andrea Montiel de Shuman wrote that many of her colleagues had been "systematically disenfranchised" and their efforts to continue using best practices at the museum have been undermined by leadership at the institution.

"In the past couple of years, the institution has been reshaped into a form that many of us cannot recognize — it is a contradictory, hostile, at times vicious and chaotic work environment that is no longer anchored in the visitor-centered practices that gave us our legacy, the one that we use in our marketing materials and that we quote to pursue funding," wrote de Shuman, who resigned from the museum June 15.

In a request for comment, the board said it was "aware of the complaints" and are taking them seriously.

Importantly, we have full confidence in Salvador Salort-Pons and the leadership team of the DIA, and the high professional standards used to implement the museum’s policies approved by this board," read a statement from Eugene Gargaro, who chairs the board of directors at the DIA. "The Board has hired a nationally-respected law firm, with no prior relationship to the museum, to conduct an independent review of our policies that govern our art loans processes and conservation services. This will ensure all best governance practices will continue to be followed."

In a separate complaint directed at the museum, a whistle-blower has accused Salort-Pons of skirting conflict-of-interest rules after he lobbied an art collector from Dallas to loan a painting to the museum. The collector is Salort-Pons' father-in-law.