L.A. Museum of the Holocaust seeks new executive director

The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust (LAMOTH), which moved into a new $20 million building in 2010, is seeking a new executive director. 

According to LAMOTH board chair E. Randol Schoenberg, the board decided at a meeting on Dec. 2 not to renew the contract of its current executive director, Mark Rothman. Schoenberg will serve as acting executive director until a new leader can be found. The change was announced in an e-mail sent to the museum’s supporters on Dec. 6. 

“The person who has the full package of what we’re looking for will be someone with a real educational and curatorial vision, and someone can really inspire people intellectually and inspire them to donate to the museum, because that’s what we need to run the museum,” Schoenberg said in an interview.

Rothman served nearly six years at the helm of LAMOTH, as the museum built and moved into its current building, an architecturally ambitious structure in Pan Pacific Park. 

Schoenberg, who has chaired the LAMOTH board since 2005 and was re-elected at the Dec. 2 meeting for another two-year term, was involved in Rothman’s hiring in 2007. 

“He was the exact right person to guide us through that crazy process of building a building,” Schoenberg said of Rothman, who will serve as a consultant to the museum until March 2013, when his contract ends.

Rothman, in an email to the Journal, wrote, “I want to thank the Board of Directors, the staff, our volunteers and the entire Museum community for the opportunity you entrusted to me. I value the many inspiring and unforgettable people I have met and worked with during my tenure at the Museum. It has been a privilege and an honor to serve you and the Museum’s essential mission.”