Lucas Museum shocker: Chief curator Pilar Tompkins Rivas is out in latest shakeup

Less than a period aft announcing its opening date, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art told unit that main curator Pilar Tompkins Rivas is leaving the depository this week.

“There are nary contiguous plans to regenerate Pilar’s relation arsenic Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Curatorial and Collections,” wrote interim Chief Executive Jim Gianopulos successful an email obtained by The Times. “George Lucas volition proceed to oversee curatorial contented and direction.”

Rivas did not respond to a petition for comment.

The $1-billion Lucas Museum, which remains connected way to unfastened connected Sept. 22, 2026, issued a connection that said, “We convey Pilar Tompkins Rivas for her hard enactment implicit the past 5 years, which has been instrumental successful preparing the depository for its opening. We privation her good successful her aboriginal endeavors.”

Rivas’ departure comes 9 months aft erstwhile depository manager and CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont stepped down from her role. Jackson-Dumont did not remark publically astir her departure, but the depository said successful a connection astatine the clip that her determination was based connected a “new organizational design” that would divided her occupation into 2 positions, with Lucas liable for contented absorption and Gianopulos, the erstwhile president and CEO of 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures, assuming the CEO rubric until a imperishable 1 could beryllium found.

Three months aft that, the depository laid disconnected 15 full-time employees, galore from the organization’s acquisition and nationalist programming squad — amounting to 14% of the full-time staff. An further 7 part-time, on-call employees besides mislaid their jobs. At that time, 2 employees, who asked to stay anonymous retired of fearfulness of retaliation, described the layoffs arsenic shocking and chaotic.

In 2020, the Lucas Museum was touted for appointing six women — 5 of whom were women of colour — to enactment roles. That fig did not see Jackson-Dumont. With Rivas nary longer successful her job, lone 2 women hired astatine that clip remain: Larissa Gentile, managing manager of peculiar projects, and Erica Neal, manager of computing and infrastructure.

“I’m an advocator for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, that’s a immense portion of who I am,” Jackson-Dumont told The Times successful 2020. “But erstwhile I’m hiring, I’m looking for the champion and astir qualified candidates — and that was them.”

Rivas is known for her transportation to Los Angeles and its divers communities. She was formerly the manager and main curator astatine the Vincent Price Art Museum astatine East Los Angeles College. Prior to that she worked arsenic coordinator of curatorial initiatives astatine the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her resume besides includes curatorial and task coordinator positions astatine Santa Monica’s 18th Street Arts Center, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and the Claremont Museum of Art.