Corcoran Gallery director resigns

David C. Levy has resigned as president and director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Corcoran’s board of trustees has suspended the museum’s efforts to build a new wing designed by architect Frank Gehry, for which fundraising largely has stalled.

“If you don’t have your money, you can’t build it,” board Chairman John T. Hazel said Monday. “And we can’t afford the enormous cost of fishing trips until we find a better way to target the donor base that we really need.”

In a prepared statement, Levy told the board that the 136-year-old Washington institution had “made a great deal of progress over the 14 years of my tenure,” adding that “we are on the brink of securing the Corcoran’s future for generations to come.” He acknowledged that completing the Gehry project was an “enormous challenge,” but he disagreed strongly with the board’s decision.

“Publicly ‘suspending’ the Gehry campaign,” he said, “is tantamount to declaring it dead and buried.”

Levy had been under pressure from board members who felt that his focus on the Gehry project had kept the museum from addressing other pressing needs.

The board also moved to begin developing new operational and strategic plans for the museum. Included will be a reexamination of the Corcoran’s “mission and identity” and a plan to deal with persistent operating deficits and necessary renovations to the museum’s existing Beaux-Arts building, which was built in 1897 and requires, Hazel said, $35 million to $40 million worth of repairs. Hazel said the museum would ask the permission of donors to the Gehry project to redirect their money.

Hazel said that the Gehry effort could be revived if one or two large donors came up with $100 million.

Gehry, reached while traveling in Italy, said that businesspeople on museum boards sometimes overreact to financial problems “because they’re used to keeping companies in the black, and when they see red ink, they don’t understand that’s the way every museum in the world is.”

With the push for the new wing suspended, the architect wondered, “How are they going to find another director of any significant kind?”

Levy said that he decided only Monday morning to resign. His differences with Hazel and his supporters were “developing into a real fight,” he said, the continuation of which would damage the Corcoran.