Brian Slattery File Photo
Now-former Ely Center employee Max Schmidt: "I think we can do better."
A now-former employee at a Trumbull Street visual arts gallery left his job after finding out about a board member’s decade-old child pornography arrest.
That employee is now speaking out about what he describes as an insensitive and unsupportive workplace, as well as an alleged exodus of board members sparked by their former colleague’s criminal record.
That employee is Max Schmidt. Earlier this year, Schmidt left his job as gallery coordinator at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art (ECOCA), a nonprofit-run arts hub that has long operated out of a historic converted Victorian mansion at 51 Trumbull St.
After the Independent first published an article on Monday about ECOCA’s newly launched community conversation series focused on how to make the gallery a “safe” workplace, Schmidt came forward to tell his side of the story to the Independent about why he left — and about what he sees as the core problems at a place he worked at for four years.
Schmidt said the main reason for his departure was the presence on ECOCA’s board of Suneet Talpade, who has subsequently left the board.
Talpade declined to comment for this article. See below in this article for a full comment from ECOCA’s current board co-chair, Helen Kauder, who wrote that the nonprofit does not discriminate based on an individual’s criminal justice status, and who recognized that the Ely Center does “have room for real improvement in our HR and governance practices.”
“New Haven is a city for second chances. This individual exemplified the power of the arts as avenue for rehabilitation and redemption,” Kauder stated.
In December 2012, while Talpade was working as vice president of finance for Twin Rivers, a casino in Rhode Island, he was arrested on charges of child pornography, widely reported in news media at the time. He is now a registered sex offender.
In 2020 Talpade joined ECOCA’s board as treasurer and was instrumental in the purchase of the John Slade Ely House on Trumbull Street from ACES. Schmidt said he first learned about Talpade’s criminal history last year after a workplace disagreement led to him reading the minutes of the ECOCA board meeting at which board members discussed his record as a sex offender.
According to Schmidt, ECOCA board members did discuss last year whether or not Talpede’s criminal history meant he should not be on the board. They determined that a felony conviction was not a disqualification for serving on the board of a nonprofit.
Schmidt said that a tipping point for his own departure from the organization was when Tapade attended a block party ECOCA threw last October that closed down Trumbull Street and featured the gallery’s latest shows along with an outdoor bazaar of art, zines, clothing, and food vendors. ECOCA had marketed the party as “a family-friendly event.”
Schmidt said the vast majority of ECOCA’s then-board members downplayed Talpade’s criminal history when discussing whether or not he should be on the board, and then downplayed his presence at the block party, where kids were also in attendance.
“Despite multiple pleas for him to not attend the block party, he attended the block party,” Schmidt said. Schmidt was running the block party itself and at the time did not know about Talpade’s record.
“If I had gone back in time, and if I had known, I think I could have stopped it,” Schmidt said. “If I said I wasn’t going to run the block party if he was coming, there would have been no block party.… I regret not knowing.”
Schmidt said that at least one board member resigned after the block party.
By then Schmidt had been working at ECOCA for four years, a job he took right out of college after ECOCA board co-chair Debbie Hesse had brought him into the organization as an undergraduate at Albertus Magnus. “I had put my heart and soul into that building,” he said.
He said he was not supported in his criticism of Talpade being on the board, or at the block party. “There’s no way you can say confidently and comfortably, ‘yes, we let a registered sex offender around children. Willfully, consciously, meaningfully. We decided — all of us but one … — that this is what we would like to do,’ ” he said.
Schmidt said he expressed his discomfort with continuing to work with Talpade. He had found Talpade to be “volatile” even before he learned Talpade was a sex offender. In meetings, Schmidt said, “he would basically just bark at all of us and tell us how to run a nonprofit arts organization,” meetings that resulted in tearful phone calls between board members and Schmidt afterward. But Schmidt also had his own history of being victimized by “predators that have committed predatory crimes, that continue to make comments that are joking about it, and that continue to push themselves into spaces with children,” he said.
“You guys aren’t serving the children in our community,” he recalled explaining to board leaders. “You’re not serving the people who have been affected by crimes like this. You’re not being transparent with the schools that we work with. You’re not being transparent with the artists — with what they’re affiliating themselves with, and who you’re introducing them to, and what’s going on, and who they’re being photographed with.”
Talpade stepped down from the board soon after the block party, but stayed on as an “advisor,” Schmidt said, to train the new treasurer, Roger Castonguay. From Schmidt’s perspective, however, Talpade “continued to act as treasurer,” and “I would constantly be interacting with him over financial stuff.” His meetings with Talpade continued to make him uncomfortable, and he had the sense that the board was “not being transparent with me about what his role is.”
In January he called board co-chairs Helen Kauder and Hesse and asked whether ECOCA’s practices were entirely legal. He said the board members said that it wasn’t illegal. (Editor’s note: The Independent has found no reason or evidence to believe that ECOCA’s practices were illegal.)
Shortly afterward Schmidt was up for his year-end review. “Traditionally my reviews had always been held by Debbie” Hesse, to whom he reported as gallery coordinator, and Ciravolo, serving as an HR representative. This time the review included Rashmi Talpade, Suneet’s wife, who was also on the ECOCA board.
The review assessed Schmidt’s communication with supervisors as “poor,” Schmidt said. Hesse “clarified immediately that she was referring to my conversations with the board” and specifically Schmidt’s concerns about the legality of their practices regarding Talpade.
“I felt like I was blindsided,” he said about his year-end review. They “put me in a scenario where there was really no option but for me to quit,” Schmidt said. “When they turned the floor back to me, I told them I resigned.”
“I felt like part of me died when I left,” he said. But he had also seen problems. He had requested an employment manual every year. Over the years, “there were a number of times where I filed sexual harassment reports and got into screaming matches with leadership about the way we treated artists of color,” he said.
Since resigning in early February, Schmidt, now 27, has gotten work with individual artists, doing privately what he did ECOCA’s gallery coordinator — helping set up shows, pricing artwork, managing flatfiles, and working on artists’ social media and media presence. The work is “lucrative, and also I feel like I’m able to pour more heart and effort into individual tasks instead of running around like a maniac.” He also cleans a day care. “It’s one of the things that keeps me afloat” because “it’s some good that I’m doing.” And “I think kids make the coolest art in the entire world.”
At this point, he notes, Kauder and Hesse are the only two board members left of the group that was there in September when Talpade’s criminal history came to light. Schmidt thinks they should resign. “I want to see a clean sweep because I know how many other far more compassionate to the community and brilliant professionals there are,” he said.
He does not want to see ECOCA cease to exist. He gives credit to Seth Callander, the house’s caretaker, “who are trying to hold up the building in spite of all the bureaucratic issues.” And he credits the arts community, which has shown time and again that a space like the Ely Center is valuable and needed in New Haven.
“There is potential for all arts spaces in New Haven to become revitalized as spaces,” Schmidt said. ECOCA has “a unique history” and “there’s tons of people that have their soul still in that place.…I think it’s time for a renaissance of sorts. I think it’s time for the same characters we keep seeing in these communities finally bow out with humility, because obviously it’s not working,” Schmidt continued. “New Haven artists, Connecticut artists, artists of all shapes and sizes, are incredibly resilient, and there have been so many other times where things have sunk and then swum. ECOCA is a perfect example of that. We’ve survived as a community, in relation to that space, many trials and tribulations. And I think once this is rectified in a way that meaningfully protects the community and that responds to community voices, that we can figure it out.”
“I think we can do better,” Schmidt added, “and that’s what gives me hope.”
Kauder: "We Have Room For Real Improvement"
Courtesy Helen Kauder
ECOCA board co-chair Helen Kauder.
Asked for a response, current ECOCA board co-chair Helen Kauder offered this statement:
When ECOCA voted to keep our former Treasurer on the Board, and then, after his resignation, involved as a volunteer, it came after several weeks of due diligence and conversations with other non profits and an attorney. We made the decision based on the fact that the crime was more than ten years ago, that his board service was unrelated to the crime, and that the service (bookkeeping, financial management) was performed with generosity and skill. We also were motivated by our strong conviction, as outlined in our Values Statement, that we do not discriminate against an individual’s criminal justice status, and that New Haven is a city for second chances. This individual exemplified the power of the arts as avenue for rehabilitation and redemption. We also did a careful review of our recent history and confirmed with outside legal counsel that no Connecticut laws were broken, including at the Block Party.
With all that being said, I now see that in our management processes, and in our board-staff relations, we missed opportunities over the past few months to perform best communications and inter-personal practices. I said some things that were insensitive and hurtful. I am deeply sorry for this, recognize the need to be accountable for my actions, and see that we have room for real improvement in our HR and our governance processes.
This is why we are now are working with an expert consultant, provided to us by the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven, to create an employment manual and ensure a situation like this doesn’t happen again. We are about to undergo several weeks of DEI and Safe Space training.
Finally, the open meetings are, we hope, a chance for ECOCA to listen to what the community needs now from the organization, and take input and consider how it can best serve those needs. Last week’s meeting was a constructive start and we look forward to the continued conversations.
The next Wednesdays with WABI Conversation Circle, which will continue the discussion about how to improve ECOCA, happens April 12 on Zoom, 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., featuring Rev. Kevin Ewing. Register at info@elycenter.org for the Zoom link. The series continues April 26, featuring Frank Brady, and May 5, featuring Isaac Bloodworth. Visit ECOCA’s schedule of workshops for information on these and its trainings on DEIJ and safe spaces.