Patrick Moore to Step Down as Director of Warhol Museum

Patrick Moore, who since 2017 has served as director of the Andy Warhol Museum, will exit the Pittsburgh institution May 31. Moore arrived to the museum in 2011 as director of development before rising to assume his current post. Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh will launch an international search for a successor; in the meantime, deputy director Rachel Baron-Horn will lead the museum on an interim basis.

“I’m happy to be leaving on the high note of the museum’s 30th anniversary and the opening of myKAWS + Warholexhibition the weekend of May 17,” Moore said in statement. “And I look forward to continuing to collaborate with and support my many friends at The Warhol and Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.” Moore in a statement said that he plans to move to Spain with his husband.

Under Moore’s leadership, the Warhol Museum launched its Pop District initiative, a ten-year project aimed at creating a cultural hub occupying a half-dozen blocks surrounding the museum. Featuring a youth workforce program, a public art project, and, as announced last fall, a brand-new $45 million structure housing offices, event space, and a performance venue, the Pop District was estimated to generate $100 million annually when completed. However, as reported by radio station WESA, many top-level museum staffers—some of whom departed after the district’s launch—felt that the project took attention away from the institution’s mission and criticized Moore as having an uncommunicative and opaque management style. As well, Moore in recent months received blowback for allowing the museum to loan artworks for a Warhol show in AlUla, a 2,000-year-old archaeological and historical site in northwestern Saudi Arabia that the government is attempting to remake as an international arts destination: Detractors accused him of aiding the Saudi government in “artwashing” its execrable human rights record.