Queens Museum Leader Sally Tallant to Step Down After Seven Years
Under Tallant, the museum secured a $26 million expansion allocation from the city, but also drew controversy and criticism.
After a seven-year tenure, Sally Tallant will step down as president and executive director of the Queens Museum this summer, per an announcement she and the museum shared on social media today, January 21. Tallant will be returning to her native England to become the new director of the Southbank Centre's Hayward Gallery in London ahead of the organization's 75th anniversary.
Tallant moved stateside to work at the Queens Museum in November 2019, after seven years as the director of the Liverpool Biennial and a decade as head of programs at the Serpentine Gallery. Tallant had previously worked as an assistant curator at Hayward Gallery early in her career, as noted in a press statement from the Southbank Centre.
At the Queens Museum, she succeeded former President and Executive Director Laura Raicovich, who resigned in 2018 in the wake of her decision to cancel an Israeli-backed event commemorating the 1947 United Nations vote to partition Palestine to form Israel. The vote, which had taken place in the museum building back when it housed the UN General Assembly, led to the widespread displacement of Palestinians known as the Nakba or “catastrophe” in Arabic. The museum reneged on Raicovich's decision and moved forward with the event after New York and Israeli officials characterized the cancellation as antisemitic.
Originally from Leeds, Tallant had never lived in the United States before, and assumed the executive role only months before the coronavirus pandemic took hold in New York City and wreaked havoc in the borough of Queens. Like nearly all other institutions in the city, the Queens Museum closed its doors and suspended programming for six months, save for a weekly food pantry, and furloughed 30 part-time and full-time employees as quarantine restrictions went into place. The institution cautiously reopened that September, commemorating the city's essential workers with an enormous public artwork by Mierle Laderman Ukeles displayed on the building's front façade.
In 2021, under Tallant's leadership, NYC awarded $26.4 million to the Queens Museum for the second phase of an ongoing expansion plan, which included the construction of a new children's wing and an upgraded HVAC system.
That same year, the museum debuted its 18-month-long “Year of Uncertainty” (YoU) residency program, which an anonymous coalition of artists later characterized as poorly managed. In a 2023 report, the group accused Tallant of dismissing concerns regarding changes in the residency's exhibition expectations and creating “a culture of fear and silence.” Among other concerns, the group questioned the fact that Tallant embraced her Order of the British Empire (OBE) award while she led a museum in Queens, “one of the most diverse districts in the world, representing nearly every post-colonial population from across the globe.”
In November 2023, some museum workers asked leadership to make a statement about Israel's killing of Palestinians in the wake of the October 7 attack, particularly given the institution's connection to the 1947 UN vote. In a meeting between staff and leadership, an audio recording of which was acquired by Hyperallergic, Tallant said the institution was “not able to make political statements.” The employees countered that the museum had previously issued public statements of a political nature, including one during Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
In a press release about Tallant's departure, the Queens Museum said that she had “championed over 30 groundbreaking solo and group exhibitions, developed wide-reaching education and public programs, and organized ambitious public art commissions and community initiatives” throughout her tenure.
Both Hayward Gallery and the museum nodded to Tallant's 2022 partnership with Delta Airlines and Port Authority to facilitate six permanent public art commissions within LaGuardia International Airport's newly built Terminal C. They also underscored her commitment to diverse educational and public programming initiatives at the museum, from extensive online resources and classroom collaborations during the quarantine period to the annual Queens Teens Institute for Art and Social Justice program.
The Queens Museum board has already begun searching for a new president and executive director, the statement noted.
