13 March 7th–March 13th, 2019 phoenixnewtimes.com phoenix new Times | Contents | FeeDBACK | oPInIon | neWs | FEATURE | nIght+DAy | CULtURe | FILm | CAFe | mUsIC | N ancy Millman still cries when she talks about the day Amada Cruz fired her from the museum do- cent program. “To meet a kid who is 8 years old and never been to a museum before, to get him to see the beauty of art, it was won- derful,” she says through tears. “The fact that this was taken away from me was horribly painful. The way it was taken away was worse.” Cruz fired Millman via email. “She didn’t bother to meet with me,” says Millman, a retired journalist from Chicago who’d been a docent since 2001. “She didn’t care to hear what I may have been unhappy about. She didn’t care that I had volunteered for 15 years, was well- thought of, and had just had a glowing re- view from the docent review committee that same day.” Millman found out she’d been canned one afternoon in November 2016, when a fellow docent called to ask why she’d quit the program. “Amada ordered that I be erased from the books,” Millman says, “and everyone was told to say I had resigned.” Cruz won’t talk about how or why she sacked Millman. “I do not discuss person- nel issues,” is all she’ll say. “And that in- cludes volunteers. It’s really to protect the confidentiality of people like Nancy.” Millman says she was fired for chal- lenging authority, for being rude while trying to book a tour of the Kehinde Wiley exhibit, and for calling School Programs Manager Michelle Sparks a “condescend- ing bitch” in a private conversation with other docents. “Michelle gave a talk in the Phil Curtis gallery,” Millman recalls, “in which she be- littled what we’d been doing for years. She told us that getting up in front of a painting and talking about the elements of art was ridiculous, that no one talks about ele- ments of art anymore. When she was done I said, ‘Is that really what you think we do?’ She didn’t like that.” A few days later, Millman received a call from docent president Margaret Allsup, who demanded she apologize to Sparks. “She wouldn’t tell me what I was apologiz- ing for, so I figured it was because I’d chal- lenged her during her talk.” Millman wrote to Sparks, saying she was sorry and ex- plaining that she was a former investiga- tive reporter and was accustomed to asking tough questions. She didn’t hear back. The following week, Millman received an email from Amada Cruz, telling her she was no longer a docent. “She ordered me not to participate any- more,” Millman says through tears. “I wasn’t even allowed to go to lunch with my docent class.” When Cruz booted Millman without warning or first meeting with her, it caused, according to Cathy Swan, an ex- plosion. “Nancy was well-loved,” says Swan, a retired rocket scientist and former docent who joined the program in 1995. “She was the best docent, she could do everything, she worked tirelessly. She knew art history backward and forward, she gave tours in French, she worked harder than anyone. And she was fired for dar- Courtesy of the Phoenix Art Museum Board of Trustees chair Jon Hulburd says he’s heard that former museum members are changing their wills, and it makes him sad. Museum from p 10 >> p 15
