The Mysterious Resignation of the Cleveland Museum of Art Director
On Monday, Cleveland Museum of Art director David Franklin abruptly resigned his post, noting in a statement that he needed to spend more time pursuing "research and writing." But according to Cleveland alt-weekly Scene, there's more to the story …
On Monday, Cleveland Museum of Art director David Franklin abruptly resigned his post, noting in a statement that he needed to spend more time pursuing “research and writing.” But according to Cleveland alt-weekly Scene, there’s more to the story — Franklin was named in an April 28 police report as the person who discovered and reported the scene of a suicide, that of a younger female colleague with whom he had allegedly been romantically involved. Scene further alleges that the The Cleveland Plain Dealer is in possession of the same police report they obtained, but that its publisher, Terry Egger, is a Cleveland Museum of Art trustee and may have suppressed the publication of those details. An anonymous source is quoted telling the publication that David Franklin’s affair and the suicide were “the best kept secret in Cleveland for 5 months.”
The New York Times Arts Beat post on the matter, which sources the news from the Plain Dealer article announcing the resignation, has trustee R. Steven Kestner cryptically commenting that Franklin “resigned for personal reasons … I really can’t say more than that.” Franklin, a scholar of Italian Renaissance art, had previously served as the deputy director and chief curator of the National Gallery of Canada, a post from which he “mysterious[ly] disappeared” in 2008.
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