IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
The future of the San Bernardino County Museum is in doubt, due to budget cuts and the resignation of its director and senior curator.
Robert McKernan resigned as museum director last month, reportedly after being told by county administrators that they want to take the museum in a different direction, according to a report published in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.
Michele Nielsen, a senior curator, stepped down shortly after McKernan resigned. Neither has said publicly why they left, but their actions prompted a former director of the museum to address the board of supervisors.
Allan Griesemer, who served as director from 1984 to 1997, told the board during its regular meeting Tuesday that those who helped build the museum deserve to know what the board is planning to do.
In 2013, the museum lost an estimated $600,000 in federal funds because of the sequester, the across-the-board tax cuts that began last spring. Seven employees were laid off as a result of those cuts, and the museum’s budget was reduced 14 percent this year, according to the report.
The budget cuts and layoffs have clouded the museum’s future, particularly its accreditation with the American Alliance of Museums. That accreditation is scheduled to be reviewed in March 2017.
San Bernardino County Museum opened to the public in 1957, five years after it was founded by the San Bernardino County Museum Association. It moved from Bloomington to its current location in Redlands in 1974, and has displayed collections that documented the county’s human and natural history, according to the report.
