The Forces Behind Bedoya’s Resignation : Art: Former director of LACE cites ‘philosophical differences’ with the board of directors and financial hardships facing the downtown center.

“Philosophical differences and the lack of a good working relationship with the board” prompted Roberto Bedoya’s resignation as director of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, he said this week. His stepping down on Dec. 19, just seven months after Bedoya took over the top staff position at the downtown venue, was also a result of the financial hardships facing the center and the art world at large, he said.

“My main problem with the board was (that) I was planting seeds for the future and they wanted something quicker,” said Bedoya by phone from San Francisco. “The first seven months I was there were (spent) building bridges and trying to place LACE in a positive relationship with diverse communities, which are often in contradiction (with each other).”

Board co-chairs Dale Stulz and Linda Nishio, who declined to comment, will serve as interim co-directors of the center while a national search for Bedoya’s successor takes place.

On the job at the alternative-performing and visual-arts space since June, Bedoya had been working at San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts and advising the California Arts Council on multicultural programming before joining LACE. He plans to continue with his career as a poet and playwright.

That conflict, he said, was exacerbated by the shrinking of funds for the arts. “The organization is pressed financially. There are anxieties about the cash,” he said, although he stressed that the situation was no more dire than that of other organizations.

That anxiety left the board unwilling to let Bedoya work at his pace, in his own way: “How I approach being a leader, (includes) talking to many different people and that’s a slow process. The board wanted to move more quickly.”

What Bedoya’s resignation portends, however, may be a larger setback for the 12-year-old venue. Before Bedoya’s appointment, LACE had come under fire for giving too much attention to predominantly white contemporary arts and not enough to the work of minority artists. Bedoya was in the process of expanding LACE’s profile “to include more diversity and communities .”