Museum Moves

Here is a chronology of recent staff moves and funding decisions affecting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which on Friday announced the resignation of Michael E. Shapiro:

* April 28, 1992--Earl A. Powell III, director of LACMA since 1980, is named director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

* Aug. 16, 1992--LACMA’s board of directors appoints Shapiro, chief curator of the St. Louis Art Museum, as director of LACMA.

* September, 1992--County Board of Supervisors mandates a $2-million cut in funding to LACMA for 1992-93.

* October, 1992--Shapiro takes over as LACMA director. In the following months, LACMA pares its county-paid staff by 23 employees and closes selected galleries on a rotating basis.

* Jan. 15, 1993--American art curator Michael Quick announces he will take early retirement.

* April 1, 1993--Philip Conisbee, curator of European paintings and sculpture, announces his resignation to become curator of French paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

* March 16, 1993--Maurice Tuchman, founding curator of the Department of 20th-Century Art, is reassigned as curator of the new department of 20th-Century Drawings and immediately files suit against Shapiro and the Museum Associates to regain his longtime position.

* June, 1993--Sheryl Conkelton, associate curator of photography, leaves LACMA for a similar position at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

* June, 1993--Judi Freeman, associate curator of 20th-Century Art, leaves LACMA to become Joan Whitney Payson curator at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine.

* July 19, 1993--In anticipation of threatened county budget cuts, Shapiro announces that the museum will be closed an additional day of the week, on Tuesdays, beginning Aug. 31.

* July 29, 1993--County Board of Supervisors votes a $2.7-million cut in county funding to LACMA for 1993-94.

* Aug. 20, 1993--Shapiro resigns.