Bowers Sales Executive Abruptly Leaves

A top executive of the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana on Tuesday became the latest of at least a half dozen officials to leave there in the past 18 months.

“I was excited about the challenges the Bowers faces and the role I could play in helping Bowers achieve its goals,” Margaret Mooney, vice president of marketing and sales, wrote in a memo to the staff Tuesday. “However, I feel that I cannot be effective here at this time.”

Mooney would not comment further.

Mooney and Jim Stathekis, the museum’s vice president of administration and finance, had been in charge of running the Bowers day to day while executive director Peter Keller worked to fill 13 vacancies on the 30-member board of governors.

Keller did not return phone calls Tuesday.

Mooney’s resignation comes a day after the Santa Ana City Council voted to continue funding the Bowers at the current level.

Mooney worked at the Bowers for about a year, coming to the museum from America Online last April. She is the latest of half a dozen Bowers administrators who have left in the last 18 months.

Since November, the museum has been without a development director, whose job is to head fund-raising. Since the mid-1990s, no one has held the job for more than 1 1/2 years.

Bick Lockhart, a member of the board’s executive committee, said he had spoken with Keller about the number of departures from the staff.

“I said it looks kind of weird what’s going on,” Lockhart said. “The answer you get is that each of them had their own particular problems.”

Keller’s contract expires this month, and it is expected to be renewed. “The contract is no problem for him,” board member Ann Shih said Tuesday night.

On Monday, the City Council voted to maintain funding of the museum at $1.2 million for the next five years.

Santa Ana and Bowers signed an agreement in 1987 to gradually reduce the city subsidy of $1.5 million a year. The funding cutback started last year, and the museum was supposed to receive 10% less annually until the subsidy ended in 2007.

But with the cutback and the end of a five-year capital fund-raising campaign last year, the museum has lost $510,000.

The city money provides at least a third of the museum’s budget. Since the agreement was signed, the city has given the Bowers $14 million and spent $12 million more on an expansion.

Museum officials have said the main reason for the money problems is that when the 1987 agreement was made, the museum was operating on a $1.5-million annual budget. Today, with the expansion, the budget is about $3.5 million.