David A. Ross

David A. Ross is a curator and museum director who spent decades at the center of American contemporary art. He served as director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York — three of the most prominent institutions in the country’s contemporary art ecosystem. In more recent years, he held a faculty and departmental leadership position at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, a private college dedicated to arts education.

Friendship with Epstein

Emails released under the Epstein Transparency Act revealed that Ross maintained a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein spanning decades. The correspondence made public showed that the two men were in sustained personal contact across a period that included years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction in Florida for soliciting a minor. The nature of the friendship — whether it included financial dealings, social introductions, or other forms of exchange — was not fully detailed in the documents as reported publicly, but the emails indicated a relationship of personal familiarity rather than a merely transactional acquaintance.

Resignation from School of Visual Arts

Ross resigned from his position as department chair at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan on February 8, 2026, following the public release of the emails. His departure removed him from an active institutional role in arts education at a moment when the released documents had placed his relationship with Epstein under public scrutiny.

Context

Ross’s case reflected a pattern visible across the Epstein file releases: figures whose professional reputations rested on institutional credibility and cultural authority found that their associations with Epstein — however indirect their professional intersections with him may have been — carried significant reputational consequences once documented in released files. His connections to the Whitney Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art made his Epstein association notable within arts philanthropy and museum circles, where donor and trustee relationships often intersect with major financial networks.

Documents

Primary-source records that name or reference David A. Ross. Inclusion in these documents is not, by itself, evidence of wrongdoing.

• DOJ Epstein Files (EFTA release) — Ross appears in email correspondence released under the Epstein Transparency Act, which the New York Times reported showed a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein spanning decades. The emails prompted his February 2026 resignation as department chair at the School of Visual Arts. Ross’s name does not appear in the Jan. 2024 Giuffre v. Maxwell unsealing.