Seattle Art Museum Director and CEO Amada Cruz announces departure

Amada Cruz, the Seattle Art Museum’s director and CEO, announced Tuesday she is leaving the museum after four years to join the Santa Barbara Museum of Art as its director and CEO. Her SAM tenure will end this October. Cruz joined the museum in September 2019, after a four-year term at the Phoenix Art Museum. 

In a news release, SAM noted that her relocation to California offers Cruz an opportunity to “align personal and professional aspirations,” adding that she often visits the area around Santa Barbara and has many long-standing friendships there. 

Cruz told The Seattle Times in 2019, ahead of starting her SAM gig, that she wasn’t brought in to make big changes. “It’s not what this museum needs,” she said at the time. “I’m here to honor its legacy and build on this wonderful foundation.” 

But change came for her. Cruz oversaw some of the most turbulent years in SAM’s 90-year history: The pandemic forced the closure of the museum’s three sites, including its main museum in downtown Seattle and the Asian Art Museum in Seattle’s Volunteer Park, which had been open for 35 days after a yearslong renovation before having to close again due to the pandemic. Even after museums reopened across the country, the fallout from the pandemic continued to present challenges as audiences didn’t immediately return at pre-pandemic rates.

In 2020, in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, the museum created an equity task force and appointed its first director of equity, diversity and inclusion, Priya Frank. Under Cruz, the museum also acquired more works by Black, Indigenous and artists of color as well as by women and, in a major project, transformed its American art galleries to be more inclusive. 

Last year, the museum’s security guards voted to form a union, part of a wave of unionization efforts in museums across the country. In 2021, the museum welcomed a donation of 19 20th-century abstract expressionist and European masterworks estimated to be worth about $400 million, and earlier this spring, the museum announced it would receive a major donation of artworks by Alexander Calder, estimated to be worth $200 million. 

Tax records show that Cruz leaves SAM in apparently solid financial health. During fiscal year 2022 (which runs from July 2021 through June 2022), the most recent year for which records are publicly available, the museum brought in more revenue than it has in more than a decade: roughly $67 million, in part due to an increase in government grants and other gifts and grants. (The museum’s operating budget, which excludes endowment gifts and other contributions that are not immediately accessible for operations, was roughly $31 million for that same fiscal year.)

The IRS forms also show that the museum’s admission revenue has surpassed pre-pandemic levels, from $3.2 million in fiscal year 2019 to $3.4 million in fiscal year 2022.

“It has been a privilege to lead SAM for the last four years,” Cruz, who was not available for an interview, said in the news release. “I arrived in Seattle at a time when the museum faced increased excitement with the reopening of the Seattle Asian Art Museum only to have that momentum quickly tempered by the onset of the global pandemic. It’s been an incredible journey to work alongside SAM board and staff to navigate through uncertain times, and I deeply appreciate their partnership and support.” 

The museum hasn’t announced any details yet about its plans to replace Cruz, but will most likely conduct a national search. The museum said the specifics of a recruitment plan will be developed and shared in the coming weeks.

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This coverage is partially underwritten by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust. The Seattle Times maintains editorial control over this and all its coverage.