Word: pisar
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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With the $40 million they received for the old real estate, the center's executive director Henry Pillsbury and co-chairman Judith Pisar decided to put virtually the entire amount into a new building. At the same time, they launched a fund-raising campaign intended to create a $25 million endowment to cover the center's operating expenses. But the recession of the early '90s dried up donations. The fund-raising drive has brought in only $10 million so far, of which $4 million has yet to be paid. The annual budget of the center is expected to be about...
Laid-off staff members speak harshly of Pillsbury's and Pisar's "mismanagement." A former visual-arts curator, Michael Tarrantino, says that "Pillsbury's fantastic at greeting people, but he's not a manager." Says another ex-curator, Denise Luccioni: "There was no budget. I was just supposed to work, and we were told, 'We'll find the budget."' Even as the financial crisis was coming to a head in 1992, says Luccioni, the board of directors, uninformed about the money problems, was debating questions like "If you say American Center, does that imply Mexico and Canada?" Outsiders are also...
...Pisar and Pillsbury adamantly reject the charges of incompetence. "When we conceived this building, economic times were different," Pisar says. "And the board approved everything. There was no dissension about the building or about our vision." Says Pillsbury: "It's not that we overspent; it's just that it's been a great struggle, as it has for every institution." Pillsbury, an heir to the flour fortune and a sometime actor and poet, will soon step down after 27 years as executive director to make "room for new leadership," as he puts it. Pisar seems headed for an emeritus position...