Amid $33m renovation project, Bronx Museum’s executive director departs to lead MFA St Petersburg

Klaudio Rodriguez, the Bronx Museum executive director who has been instrumental in getting the institution’s $33m expansion and renovation project underway—a groundbreaking ceremony took place on 11 July—will be long gone by the time it is completed in 2026. The museum announced yesterday (12 August) that he is stepping down in order to “return to his home state of Florida”, and today the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in St Petersburg, Florida, announced that Rodriguez would be its new executive director and chief executive, starting in October.

“It has been an honour and a pleasure to work with the staff and board of the Bronx Museum over the past seven years,” Rodriguez said in a statement. “I am leaving the museum in great hands and with a great team.” The museum’s deputy director, Shirley Solomon, and its chief advancement officer, Yvonne Garcia, will serve as interim co-leaders while the next executive director is recruited.

Rodriguez first joined the Bronx Museum as a deputy director in 2017 and was appointed executive director in 2020. Prior to his time there, he was the chief curator at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami. Born in Nicaragua and raised in Miami, Rodriguez studied graphic design, painting, architecture and art history at several South Florida universities, including earning a Masters in Latin American and Caribbean studies from FIU.

“It is especially meaningful to return to the region where I was raised and began my career in arts and culture,” he said in a statement. “I truly believe that the MFA is well-positioned to enrich lives through art, foster impactful dialogue and create inclusive spaces for all.” Inclusive spaces have become all the more important in Florida under governor Ron DeSantis, who has brought culture-wars scrutiny to arts and education funding, impacting universities and art organisations across the state.

Rodriguez succeeds Anne-Marie Russell, who stepped down on 1 March. Her departure was announced in November 2023, a little over a year after she first joined the museum as interim director.

Russell’s brief tenure came not long after a scandal concerning an exhibition of Greek antiquities at the MFA, many of which were revealed to have incomplete provenance documentation. A subsequent staging of the exhibition at the Denver Art Museum was cancelled, and its curator, Michael Bennett, was initially placed on leave by the MFA and eventually fired. Though the MFA did not publicly give a reason for Bennett’s firing, a letter from the institution’s lawyer to Bennett’s lawyer quoted in press reports stated: “If cause were required to terminate Dr Bennett’s employment, MFA would have more than sufficient grounds to do so, as Dr Bennett well knows.”