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Thursday, December 13, 2001

Photography museum director resigns over Afghanistan exhibit

By LAURA STEWART and CINDI BROWNFIELD | News-Journal Staff Writers

DAYTONA BEACH — The woman who led Daytona Beach Community College's photography museum for 10 years has resigned, claiming college administrators censored her by telling her to cancel an exhibit on Afghanistan.

College officials denied the allegations.

"It's clear that there is no place for me at the college," said Alison Nordstrom, 51, director and senior curator of the Southeast Museum of Photography at DBCC since 1991. "The bottom line is that, for reasons I don't fully understand, the college decided to change my job description.

"I am the curator. That is my job description. It says I plan, organize and realize exhibits at the Museum of Photography," she said Wednesday. "It's what I've always done."

But at a meeting in mid-November, "I was told that my exhibitions have a liberal bias and that I am an elitist," said Nordstrom, who will be on paid leave until her contract expires at the end of the spring semester. Her last day is Friday.

She also said she was told to cancel a February exhibit of Afghanistan photographs and that in the future, a committee would review her curatorial choices.

Frank Lombardo, DBCC vice president of academics, denied that college officials told Nordstrom to cancel the Afghanistan show. Instead, Lombardo said, he told her not to schedule the show at the same time as another exhibit celebrating patriotism in America, this one suggested by DBCC President Kent Sharples.

"At no time did I ever tell Alison she should not do the Afghanistan show. I said, 'Do the shows, but do them separately,' " Lombardo said Wednesday. "We wanted a feel-good show (about patriotism in America). I didn't want to bring in veterans and have pictures with a bunch of dead bodies laying around."

Also contributing to Nordstrom's decision to resign was a plan by top college officials to form a new advisory committee that would oversee future museum exhibitions.

"We want to connect (the museum) closer to the college. It's really part of academics. We want the community and students to be part of the museum. No one else (other than Nordstrom) had any say-so into the curation of the museum," Lombardo said.

Nordstrom's supervisor at the college, Nancee Bailey, associate vice president of curriculum and instruction, said it was obvious Nordstrom was not happy about the plan for the new exhibition committee. "Alison felt, and this is my conjecture, but she felt her professionalism was being questioned," Bailey said Wednesday.

Nordstrom said she ultimately resigned after being given the choice to quit or be reassigned to an administrative position outside the museum. Lombardo and Bailey said Nordstrom's resignation was voluntary and she was not given an ultimatum. Despite the tensions and Nordstrom's resignation, college administrators said they believed plans were still moving forward for both exhibitions one on Afghanistan, another on U.S. patriotism.

Lombardo said he didn't discover until Tuesday that Nordstrom had canceled the Afghanistan exhibit. College officials scrambled Wednesday to put it back on the schedule.

The spring schedule in the Southeast Museum's galleries includes "Invisible No More," an exhibit of works from the permanent collection that celebrates the museum's 10th anniversary and, ironically, Nordstrom's decade in Daytona Beach. Also planned at the same time is the patriotic "What America Means To Me," with a section on Afghanistan, said Jennifer Maxwell, the museum's assistant director for exhibitions and collections.

Kevin Miller, chairman of the college's Visual Arts Department, will become interim director of the photo museum Jan. 2. Nordstrom had planned exhibits through 2003, and he intends to follow her exhibit schedule. He'll start with a skeleton staff, since the museum's assistant director for administration, Jeffery Boyce, resigned Nov. 30. Boyce could not be reached for comment about why he resigned.

Miller said he will be looking for consistency. "We need to find the recipe behind (Alison's) success," he said. "Alison is a brilliant curator, a brilliant, intellectual curator."

Nordstrom's other colleagues agreed. "She's done a terrific job of making the community college gallery relevant to the community," said Gary Libby, director of the Daytona Beach Museum of Arts and Sciences until his Nov. 1 retirement. "She had just been elected regional vice president of the Florida Art Museum Directors Association, and was putting DBCC on the state's museum map."

Nordstrom, who earned an annual salary of $67,886, also won major funding for the photo museum.

"I loved my job," Nordstrom said. "I think this was a culture clash. I think they think I didn't belong there. Now I don't."

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