Gaëtane Verna Out as Executive Director of Wexner Center

Gaëtane Verna Out as Executive Director of Wexner Center

Gaëtane Verna, who since 2022 has served as the executive director of theWexner Center for the Artsat the Ohio State University in Columbus, has resigned her role there. TheColumbus Dispatchreports that Wexner staffers learned of her departure through an October 29 email from OSU provost Ravi M. Bellamkonda. Trevor Brown, the university’s senior vice provost for academic affairs, will mind the store until an interim director is appointed.

Verna arrived to the Wexner from the Power Plant in Toronto, where she spent a decade as artistic director. TheDispatchlast weekrevealed that under her guidance, the Wexner found itself short roughly $2.5 million of its expective income and instead running a $1.1 million deficit for fiscal year 2024. The contemporary art institution’s expenditures that year included $365,000 for a website redesign, $185,000 for a new projector, and $1 million for “unspecified capital expenditures.” According to both the paper and the staff letter, OSU issued the Wexner a “red card” over its fiscal woes earlier in the year.

The Dispatch additionally reported more than a dozen staffers signed an end-of-summer letter to Bellamkonda expressing a vote of no confidence in Verna’s leadership. The letter, first brought to public light by Matter News, noted that the Wexner had lost nearly 50 percent of employees between Verna’s appointment and August 2025, as well as seven of twenty-four board trustees. Hyperallergic in 2024 interviewed four former and current staffers under condition of anonymity. The group complained of “low staff morale” and “poor leadership” and accused Verna of castigating staffers in meetings, making impulsive and unexplained curatorial and financial decisions, and forcefully refusing to entertain the opinions of others.