David A. Ross, a longtime luminary in the contemporary art world and leader of some of the top museums in the United States, resigned this week from his position as department chair at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan after emails he sent to Jeffrey Epstein were made public, revealing a friendship that spanned decades.
About 60 emails between the two men were revealed by the Justice Department in January as part of the ongoing release of millions of documents related to Mr. Epstein, who was found dead in his prison cell in August 2019 awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Among the emails was a 2009 missive in which Mr. Ross responded supportively when Mr. Epstein told him he was contemplating funding an art exhibition, tentatively titled “Statutory,” that would showcase underage models dressed to look older than they were.
“You are incredible,” Mr. Ross said in replying to the idea.
Mr. Ross, who was the director of prominent art museums in the 1980s and 1990s, including the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, sent a statement to The New York Times on Tuesday expressing his profound regret for having been “taken in” by Mr. Epstein’s story. He has not been accused of criminal misconduct in relation to Mr. Epstein.
“I continue to be appalled by his crimes and remain deeply concerned for its many victims,” Mr. Ross wrote.
In his statement, Mr. Ross said that while he was director of the Whitney Museum in New York in the mid-90s, he was introduced to Mr. Epstein. “I knew him as a wealthy patron and a collector, and it was part of my job to befriend people who had the capacity and interest in supporting the museum,” he said.
He said that he had emailed Mr. Epstein in 2008 after he was arrested and jailed on solicitation of prostitution charges in Florida “to find out what the story was because this did not seem like the person I thought I knew.” Mr. Ross also emailed Mr. Epstein, he said, when his friend got out of jail. “He told me that he had been the subject of a political frame-up because of his support of former President Clinton,” Mr. Ross wrote. “At the time, I believed he was telling me the truth.”
Mr. Ross said that he had no other contact with Mr. Epstein until years later, when he read that Mr. Epstein was being investigated again on the same charges. “I reached out to him to show support,” he wrote, apparently referring to his 2015 emails. “That was a terrible mistake of judgment. When the reality of his crimes became clear, I was mortified and remain ashamed that I fell for his lies.”
The correspondence between the men was published Tuesday in ARTnews, and on social media. Students at the School of Visual Arts also had been circulating the messages and were planning to take action to protest his continued presence on the faculty.
Mr. Ross had directed a master’s degree program in art practice at the School of Visual Arts, a private art and design college with about 3,500 undergraduate and graduate students, since 2009. Before that, he was the director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and held prominent positions at other museums.
“The School of Visual Arts is aware of correspondence between M.F.A. Art Practice Chair David A. Ross and Jeffrey Epstein, released by the Department of Justice as part of the Epstein files,” the school said in an emailed statement on Tuesday. “The college has accepted Mr. Ross’s resignation effective immediately.”
Mr. Ross continued to email Mr. Epstein occasionally through the early 2010s, the files show. In 2010, he asked Mr. Epstein to tune in to “The Colbert Report” to catch him making an appearance. He sent notes in 2011 and 2012 suggesting that they catch up sometime soon. “Always think of you when I see collections of chairs,” he wrote in one.
Much of the released correspondence was from 2009, during and after Mr. Epstein’s stint in a Florida prison for soliciting adults and minors for prostitution. Mr. Ross referred to prison as Mr. Epstein’s “special sleep-away camp” in one July note.
“Glad the nightmare is over, Jeffrey,” Mr. Ross wrote in another July 2009 message. “It was an undeserved punishment foisted upon you by jealous creeps.”
In another email he sent while Mr. Epstein was still in detention, he seems to intimate that he would like Mr. Epstein to financially support an art magazine, FLYP, that he was editing.
“We continue to push ahead to find a future for FLYP,” he wrote. “What we need to secure enough time to find the right partner moving forward is actually a relatively small amount of money, and if found, it would quickly be leveraged by the support of several large potential investors.”
In October 2009, Mr. Epstein emailed Mr. Ross to say that Roman Polanski’s lawyers were coming to see him, to discuss possible financial support for an art exhibition that would include images of young men and women, ages 14 to 25, in which they “look nothing like their true ages.”
“Juvenile mug shots, photo shop, make up. Some people go to prison because they can’t tell true age,” Mr. Epstein wrote.
Mr. Ross writes back: “You are incredible. This would be very [sic] owerful and freaky book.” He asks Mr. Epstein if he knew “that total porno commercial kiddie picture of Brooke Shields that Richard Prince appropriated for an exhibition in the early 1980s,” referring to Mr. Prince’s print “Spiritual America” (1983), which appropriated a 1976 photo of a 10-year-old, naked Ms. Shields taken by the commercial photographer Garry Gross.
Mr. Epstein said he did.
Sharon Otterman is a Times reporter covering higher education, public health and other issues facing New York City.
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