{"id":425597,"date":"2025-12-05T03:48:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T03:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/425597\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T03:48:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T03:48:18","slug":"lucas-museum-chief-curator-pilar-tompkins-rivas-departs-in-shakeup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/425597\/","title":{"rendered":"Lucas Museum chief curator Pilar Tompkins Rivas departs in shakeup"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Less than a month after announcing its opening date<\/a>, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art told staff that chief curator Pilar Tompkins Rivas is leaving the museum this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no immediate plans to replace Pilar\u2019s role as Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Curatorial and Collections,\u201d wrote interim Chief Executive Jim Gianopulos in an email obtained by The Times. \u201cGeorge Lucas will continue to oversee curatorial content and direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rivas did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

The $1-billion Lucas Museum, which remains on track to open on Sept. 22, 2026, issued a statement that said, \u201cWe thank Pilar Tompkins Rivas for her hard work over the last five years, which has been instrumental in preparing the museum for its opening. We wish her well in her future endeavors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rivas\u2019 departure comes nine months after former museum director and CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont stepped down from her role. Jackson-Dumont did not comment publicly about her departure, but the museum said in a statement at the time that her decision was based on a \u201cnew organizational design\u201d that would split her job into two positions, with Lucas responsible for content direction and Gianopulos, the former chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures, assuming the CEO title until a permanent one could be found.<\/p>\n

Three months after that, the museum laid off 15 full-time employees,<\/a> many from the organization\u2019s education and public programming team \u2014 amounting to 14% of the full-time staff. An additional seven part-time, on-call employees also lost their jobs. At that time, two employees, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, described the layoffs as shocking and chaotic.<\/p>\n

In 2020, the Lucas Museum was touted for appointing six women <\/a>\u2014 five of whom were women of color \u2014 to leadership roles. That number did not include Jackson-Dumont. With Rivas no longer in her job, only two women hired at that time remain: Larissa Gentile, managing director of special projects, and Erica Neal, director of computing and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m an advocate for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, that\u2019s a huge part of who I am,\u201d Jackson-Dumont told The Times in 2020. \u201cBut when I\u2019m hiring, I\u2019m looking for the best and most qualified candidates \u2014 and that was them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rivas is known for her connection to Los Angeles and its diverse communities. She was formerly the director and chief curator at the Vincent Price Art Museum<\/a> at East Los Angeles College. Prior to that she worked as coordinator of curatorial initiatives at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her resume also includes curatorial and project coordinator positions at Santa Monica\u2019s 18th Street Arts Center, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and the Claremont Museum of Art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Less than a month after announcing its opening date, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art told staff that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":425598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,14336,198194,198196,198191,112068,8042,2961,224,5337,198193,9105,11365,198195,102952,34445,198192,6620,11459],"class_list":{"0":"post-425597","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-ceo","11":"tag-chief-curator","12":"tag-curatorial","13":"tag-deputy-director","14":"tag-direction","15":"tag-job","16":"tag-la","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-losangeles","19":"tag-lucas-museum-shocker","20":"tag-month","21":"tag-museum","22":"tag-narrative-art","23":"tag-rivas","24":"tag-role","25":"tag-sandra-jackson-dumont","26":"tag-time","27":"tag-woman"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115664919129518834","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}