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He Left a Museum After Women Complained; His Next Job Was Bigger
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/arts/design/joshua-helmer-philadelphia-museum-art-erie-art-museum.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=HomepageHe Left a Museum After Women Complained; His Next Job Was Bigger
A Philadelphia Museum of Art boss who quietly resigned now directs the Erie Art Museum, where a woman also objected to his conduct.
Gina Ciralli, an employee at the Philadelphia Museum of Art who dated Joshua Helmer, a young manager, said that he had made her feel as if he had the power to make or break her career — telling her she “wasn’t smart enough to work at a museum” but that he could help her have “a great trajectory.”
Another woman, Alicia Parks, said he took her for drinks on her second day of work and told her that if she wanted to succeed she should “get to know him.”
“I worked in the N.F.L. for five years,” said Ms. Parks, a former Philadelphia Eagles cheerleader, “and no one spoke to me in a way that made me feel that uncomfortable.”
Neither of those women worked directly for Mr. Helmer, but they were his subordinates in rank, and three employees who were familiar with their accounts said they reported their concerns to museum managers, starting as early as 2016.
They were never quite sure what happened to their complaints, but in early 2018, Mr. Helmer resigned for reasons that have not been disclosed.
Just a few months later, though, he resurfaced, this time with an even bigger job, as the director of the Erie Art Museum in Erie, Pa., making him one of the youngest museum chiefs in America.
Shortly after, Mr. Helmer texted a college student working at the Erie museum, suggesting she come to his house. “Coffee my place I have a cool back deck,” it said, according to a screenshot the woman, Asla Alkhafaji, provided to The New York Times. After she told him she could only meet in public, Ms. Alkhafaji said, he began ignoring her at work and one day told her, “You’re the most useless intern we have.”
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A spokesman for the Philadelphia Museum, Norman Keyes, said Mr. Helmer “was separated” from the museum in February 2018 and that the museum could not discuss his exit because conditions of departures were confidential.
Late last year, the museum barred Mr. Helmer from entering the building, according to an email it sent to staff members.
The Times spoke with nine women who said that Mr. Helmer made advances toward them in the workplace, and with other employees who were aware of this behavior. Four of the women acknowledged they entered consensual relationships with Mr. Helmer. Mr. Helmer dated two women who directly reported to him, an apparent violation of museum policy, and warned them not to report it, they said.
The women who dated him described a pattern of behavior in which he came to exert power as a boss over them in those relationships, even when he was not their direct supervisor, telling them he would be running the museum someday and had the ability to fire, hire, or promote whomever he pleased.
“He always said he was my indirect supervisor,” said Ms. Ciralli, who at 22 dated Mr. Helmer while working as a project coordinator on a two-year grant. “He used that as one of the reasons we had to keep our relationship under wraps: ‘If you want to stay at the museum we should probably keep it quiet.’”
Late last year, the museum barred Mr. Helmer from entering the building, according to an email it sent to staff members.
The Times spoke with nine women who said that Mr. Helmer made advances toward them in the workplace, and with other employees who were aware of this behavior. Four of the women acknowledged they entered consensual relationships with Mr. Helmer. Mr. Helmer dated two women who directly reported to him, an apparent violation of museum policy, and warned them not to report it, they said.
The women who dated him described a pattern of behavior in which he came to exert power as a boss over them in those relationships, even when he was not their direct supervisor, telling them he would be running the museum someday and had the ability to fire, hire, or promote whomever he pleased.
“He always said he was my indirect supervisor,” said Ms. Ciralli, who at 22 dated Mr. Helmer while working as a project coordinator on a two-year grant. “He used that as one of the reasons we had to keep our relationship under wraps: ‘If you want to stay at the museum we should probably keep it quiet.’”
