Artwork Institute of Chicago (AIC) President and Director James Rondeau has taken a voluntary go away of absence amid an ongoing investigation into accusations of stripping in public whereas aboard a flight to Germany final month.
After the aircraft landed, law enforcement officials had been referred to as to the scene in response to studies {that a} passenger had taken off his garments.
“The Art Institute takes this very seriously and has opened an independent investigation into the incident to gather all available information,” an AIC spokesperson informed Hyperallergic in an announcement.
United Airways declined to remark. Rondeau has not but responded to Hyperallergic’s inquiry.
Based in 1879 because the Chicago Academy of Superb Arts, the AIC is likely one of the United States’s most internationally recognizable arts museums, recognized for its everlasting assortment of greater than 300,000 works, which started with a particular deal with avant-garde European portray and sculpture, and for its affiliated arts establishment, the Faculty of the Artwork Institute of Chicago.
Rondeau, who makes greater than $1 million a yr in wage (as of 2023), has been with the museum for practically three many years. He first joined the AIC in 1998 as an affiliate curator of latest artwork earlier than transferring right into a curator place of Trendy and Up to date Artwork in 2004.
