When I last wrote (here and here) about the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the place was in an unseemly state of administrative disarray: Its internationally respected but locally embattled director, Nathalie Bondil, having been summarily fired on July 13, 2020 from her 13-year position at the helm of the museum, fired back with a lawsuit seeking $2 million (Canadian dollars) in damages for allegedly unfair dismissal and libel.
At that time, I noted that “we may never know whether the museum’s deposed director is being denied the due process of having the opportunity to publicly confront and rebut her accusers, or is being spared embarrassing public exposure of her alleged faults.” Having gotten the measure of Bondil during a long conversation over lunch in New York almost five years ago, I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t go quietly.
Now that she has had the opportunity to “confront her accusers,” in court, we still don’t know the extent of her alleged deficiencies (having to do with what her detractors described as a “toxic workplace”), nor can we evaluate the validity of those allegations, because the parties are not disclosing the terms of their settlement. All we know is what’s been communicated in this cryptic press release, which is mostly devoted to extolling the fired director’s “professionalism” and her “deep and sincere commitment to the museum”:
The Board of Trustees of the Museum notes that during this period, which coincided with the management of the pandemic crisis, Ms. Bondil worked tirelessly to protect the institution and the jobs of its employees. The Museum thanks Ms. Bondil for the important artistic productions she and the remarkable teams she led during the many years that she devoted to the Museum achieved, including the significant development of the collections, the international influence of the exhibitions, the expansions of the Quebec and Canadian Art Pavilion in 2011, the Peace Pavilion in 2016, and the Tout-Monde wing in 2019, as well as the exceptional development of educational, social, inclusive and therapeutic activities.
That laudatory assessment was in sharp contrast to this MFA press release, issued when Bondil was sacked, which suggested that she had presided over “a significant and multilayered deterioration of the workplace climate, described by some employees as ‘toxic.’” It took Bondil to task for her “inflexibility” and her “denial of several of the incontrovertible findings” in a report issued by an “external human resources management consultant” that had been engaged to analyze the situation.
While attempting to put this sorry episode behind them, the parties didn’t exactly kiss and make up. The official statement announcing the settlement of Bondil’s lawsuit gave her the last word:
While I was profoundly hurt [emphasis added], I know that it has also been difficult for all parties involved and in particular for the Museum’s employees. I wish the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts nothing but success in the future: Thank you for all these extraordinary years.
As for the museum’s last words in this matter, its press release ends by instructing pesky journalists (i.e., me) to bug off:
Please note that the parties will make no further comment and will not grant interviews.
Never one to take “no” for an answer, I did fire off some additional questions (such as: “Did Bondil receive a monetary settlement and, if so, was it equal to or less than the C$2 million that she sued for? Was the board’s issuance of a conciliatory statement praising her leadership stipulated as part of the terms of the settlement?”)
If I learn more, you’ll learn more (but I doubt that I’ll receive a response).
In the meantime, let’s hope for a less discordant future under the museum’s current director, Stéphane Aquin, who was hired to succeed Bondil in November 2020, after what had been billed as “an international recruitment process.”
The search may have been international, but it resulted in the hiring of a local favorite: Born in Montreal, Aquin had worked early in his career at the Montreal MFA, so this is something of a homecoming. At the end of this CultureGrrl post, I had expressed thinly veiled skepticism that a museum that had become so publicly dysfunctional would manage to attract an internationally prominent candidate. Aquin holds a master’s degree in art history from the University of Montreal and worked at the Montreal MFA on the opening of its Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion in 1991. He later became its curator of contemporary art, before a five-year stint in Washington as chief curator of the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum. His Montreal appointment is consistent with the recent trend of contemporary art specialists being chosen for the top spots at museums with distinguished historic collections.
Photo: Jean-François Brière
As for Aquin’s plans for the MFA, see this piece from the Montreal Gazette, which said that he hoped to “change what he feels has been too strong an emphasis on relationships with the museums of Europe, particularly France.“
Speaking of which, Bondil, who in 2019 was awarded the Legion of Honor (France’s highest national distinction), now heads the Museums and Exhibitions Division of the Institut du monde arabe in Paris.
Plus ça change…
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