Art Institute of Chicago’s director on leave amid investigation into airplane incident

James Rondeau, the director and president of the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC), has taken voluntary leave from his role while the museum conducts an investigation into an incident on a flight from Chicago to Munich last month.

German police were called to meet a United Airlines flight from Chicago when it landed in Munich on 18 April amid reports that a passenger, Rondeau, had removed his clothes. According to CBS News, which first reported the news, the incident occurred after Rondeau took prescription medicine and consumed alcohol. A spokesperson for the AIC confirmed to The New York Times that the CBS report was accurate.

In a statement shared with The Art Newspaper, a spokesperson for the museum said: “The Art Institute takes this very seriously and has opened an independent investigation into the incident to gather all available information.”

Rondeau has not publicly commented on the incident.

Rondeau has been the AIC’s director and president since 2016, but has worked at the museum since 1998, first as an associate curator of contemporary art, later as the chair of its contemporary department and then, following the merging of its modern and contemporary departments, as the chair and curator of the new department. As such he was involved in the inaugural installation of the museum’s new Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing when it opened in 2009. In 2015 he helped secure the museum’s largest gift ever, a trove of 42 modern masterpieces from the collectors Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson collectively valued at $400m.

Rondeau’s tenure at the helm of the museum has had its share of challenges, too, including negotiations with a newly formed union representing workers at the AIC and its affiliated school that eventually resulted in a contract agreement in summer 2023. In September of that year, a former payroll manager at the museum was accused of embezzling $2m from the institution; he subsequently pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison. And in May 2024, amid a global wave of campus protests in solidarity with Palestine, more than 80 students from the School of the Art Institute (SAIC) and Columbia College Chicago were arrested after forming an encampment on the museum grounds (charges against them were later dropped).