The National Academy Museum and School has let go several members of its staff, including both its registrars, the marketing director, the building manager and senior curator Bruce Weber. Dr. Marshall Price, the museum’s contemporary curator, left on his own volition in March to become a curator at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. According to sources with knowledge of the situation, the National Academy’s director, Carmine Branagan, told the museum’s board that the reason the employees were let go was financial, but the real reason stems from disagreements within the institution over its future direction—namely, the promotion of Maurizio Pellegrin, a member of the school’s faculty, to the powerful position of creative director of both the National Academy School and its museum, which are located in a townhouse on Museum Mile.
