Dear colleagues, 

It is with a profound sense of gratitude that I share the news that John Weber, executive director of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art since 2019, is retiring, effective Sept. 30.  

John has been an innovative steward of the museum, building on the strong foundation left by his predecessor, Jill Hartz. Over the last academic year, JSMA served over 11,000 UO students and faculty through its outreach. He initiated a new Faculty Engagement Working Group to increase interaction and collaboration with faculty to foster curricular use of the museum.  

During his time as executive director, John secured the two largest endowments in JSMA history and increased the museum’s endowments by $7 million. He endowed the position of Curator of Academic Outreach & Caribbean Art, and secured initial funding for the museum’s first Curator of Contemporary and Traditional Chinese Art.

But his accomplishments go beyond fundraising. 

His leadership has helped integrate the museum into the core academic mission of the university. He oversaw redesign of JSMA spaces to launch a new Collections Lab, providing needed storage space and serving as a flexible teaching tool. Since opening in February 2023, the Collections Lab has provided students and faculty with direct teaching and learning experience to thousands of JSMA collection works not currently on view.  

He brought Isaac Julien’s internationally acclaimed video installation Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass to the museum. He also oversaw the presentation of Strange Weather: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation and curated the Black Lives Matter Artist Project Grant exhibition.  

Weber came to UO in 2019 from the University of California Santa Cruz Institute of the Arts and Sciences, where he was founding director. A native Oregonian, he grew up in Corvallis and graduated from Reed College in Portland.  

John has helped make JSMA a better museum and the university a better place. 

The university has hired the firm Management Consultants for the Arts to lead a national search for a new executive director. The search committee is being chaired by Laura Vandenburgh, director of the School of Art + Design.  Recruiting will take place during spring term and interviews of finalists are set to take place by late spring or early summer.  

For more information about the search and process, please visit the JSMA Executive Director Search webpage. 

Please join me in thanking John for his service to the museum and the university.  

Sincerely, 

Christopher P. Long 
Provost and Senior Vice President