With the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art inching closer to finally opening next fall, an exodus afflicting the Los Angeles institution’s leadership is continuing, with Pilar Tompkins Rivas, the museum’s chief curator and deputy director of curatorial and collections, having left her post. The Los Angeles Times first reported news of her departure on Friday.
Founded by ARTnews Top 200 Collectors George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, the museum has long been in the works, though it only officially set its opening date last month. With an official inauguration date of September 22, 2026, the museum is set to focus on what it has termed “narrative art,” or work that “tells the story of a society,” according to Lucas.
In the run-up to its opening, the museum has made headlines for its acquisitions of high-profile artworks, including key pieces by Robert Colescott, Norman Rockwell, and Frida Kahlo.
Tompkins Rivas, who directed the Vincent Price Art Museum prior to taking the post at the Lucas, was one of six women appointed to high-ranking posts at the forthcoming museum in 2020 by then director and CEO Sandra Jackson-Dumont. Most of those hires were women of color. According to the Los Angeles Times, just two of Jackson-Dumont’s hires remain. Jackson-Dumont exited the institution in February. Then, in May, the museum laid off 15 employees, or 14 percent of its full-time staff.
When Jackson-Dumont left, the Lucas Museum said it was initiating a new leadership structure in which Lucas himself took over what the institution obliquely described as “content direction.” The CEO post, meanwhile, was taken up in an interim capacity by Jim Gianopulos, the former chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures.
In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, the Lucas Museum said that it had “no immediate plans to replace Pilar’s role,” but that “George Lucas will continue to oversee curatorial content and direction.” The statement continued, “We 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.”
ARTnews has reached out to Tompkins Rivas and the Lucas Museum for comment.
Other high-profile figures to have departed the Lucas Museum prior to its opening include Amanda Hunt, who served as director of public programs and creative practice and left for the Walker Art Center, and Dan Nadel, who was formerly curator at large and recently joined the Whitney Museum.
