SA Museum CEO steps down, new interim boss named
The CEO of the South Australian Museum has stepped down on the recommendation of the organisation’s board, with one of the state’s top arts leaders appointed to the role on an interim basis.
The state government has accepted the SA Museum board’s recommendation for new leadership of the institution, seeing CEO Dr David Gaimster step down.
He will be replaced by Arts South Australia executive director Clare Mockler as interim CEO while a recruitment process is undertaken in early 2025 to fill the role on a permanent basis.
Mockler is the former CEO of the City of Adelaide and has most recently been leading the development of South Australia’s new cultural policy.
Dr Gaimster’s departure follows the resignation of the SA Museum chair Kim Cheater, who stepped down on the release of findings from a Premier’s Review into the institution.
The Review delivered six recommendations and was set up in April following a strong backlash from scientists and museum supporters to controversial restructuring plans.
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Changes under the proposed restructure, which has now been canned, would have included the axing of all 27 positions in the Museum’s research and collections division, to be replaced by 22 new roles focusing on curatorial research.
The state government also announced it would inject an extra $4.1 million into the SA Museum, and made “a commitment that no functional or structural changes will be proposed to the Museum’s research and collection priorities and business models, prior to the finalisation of the Museum’s new Strategic Plan”.
The now-cancelled restructure announced to staff in February prompted a protest on the steps on Parliament, an open letter signed by over 400 prominent individuals, a petition signed by over 10,000 people and a second inquiry by the Statutory Authorities Review Committee into the SA Museum and the Art Gallery.
Dr David Gaimster was appointed as director of the SA Museum in 2023. Photo: SA Museum.
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Arts Minister Andrea Michaels said the government “accepts the board’s recommendation that new leadership is in the best interests of the Museum going forward”.
“The Museum is incredibly important to the people of South Australia and the Museum board are focused on delivering the recommendations made by the Premier’s Review Panel,” Michaels said.
“I thank Dr Gaimster for his contribution to the Museum and wish him all the best.”
Liberal MP John Gardner, who presented a petition to Parliament in August calling on the state government to “save the SA museum” from reform plans which was signed by more than 10,000 people, told InDaily that Gaimster’s departure was a “sad inevitability of the government’s woeful and pitiful mismanagement of the Museum”.
“There was a sort of sad inevitability about this situation and I think that the new chair of the board and the museum can now go forward, but they still need to have improved funding and I think the government needs to bear a substantial amount of responsibility for the fiasco that’s taken place over the last 12 months,” he said.
“Clare Mockler will do a very sound job. She’s a well-respected public servant and Clare will in the interim be able to manage things.
“But there’s a lot of work to be done at the museum to rebuild trust…and there’s still the underlying structural budget problem that was exacerbated so poorly by the government’s first budget in which they cut funding to a Museum budget that was already strained.”
