Trustees of Prominent West Coast Artist Residency Linked to Epstein’s Island Visit

Two board members of the esteemed Djerassi Resident Artists Program in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains visited financier Jeffrey Epstein’s Little Saint James island in 2011, two years after Epstein’s first conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, the Department of Justice’s recently released files revealed.

In an email sent from art collector and Epstein’s reputation manager Al Seckel to redacted recipients, trustees Alexander Maxwell Djerassi and Michael Molesky are listed as guests on an itinerary dated the weekend of January 7, 2011. The itinerary was for the “Mindshift Conference,” a convening of academics in the fields of science and medicine, with events at the Ritz Carlton on Saint Thomas and Epstein’s notorious private island in the US Virgin Islands. The conference consisted of meetings and evening activities led by conference participants, from star-gazing and wine tasting to a lock-picking demonstration and “the game of Diplomacy for anyone who knows how to play.”

Maxwell Djerassi, a Djerassi board member since 2017, is the nephew of convicted sex trafficker and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. (He is the son of Dale Djerassi, a film producer, and Isabel Maxwell, the former president of the Israeli Internet company Commtouch and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister.) In 2007, Isabel Maxwell married Al Seckel.

Molesky, also a trustee since 2017, is the founder of the startup Marker and the former COO of LiveRail, a monetization platform for video publishing that Meta acquired in 2014.

“Two of our trustees were among those invited to attend a social lunch in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2011, years before they joined the board,” a spokesperson for the Djerassi Resident Artists Program told Hyperallergic in a statement.

“The Program had no knowledge of and no involvement in this event. Neither Jeffrey Epstein nor Ghislaine Maxwell has ever donated to, visited, or had any contact with the Djerassi Resident Artists Program,” the spokesperson said.

A former Djerassi program employee, who asked to remain anonymous, told Hyperallergic that the board members’ relation to Isabel Maxwell and visit to the Little Saint James Island was known by staff and residents prior to the release of the Epstein files and openly discussed, but that staff were discouraged from bringing it up in the presence of Maxwell Djerassi.

The 583-acre Djerassi Resident Artist Program was established in 1979 by the late Carl Djerassi, a chemist and inventor of the birth-control pill, and his wife, the author Diane Middlebrook. The program was originally founded as a women-only residency, in honor of the couple’s daughter Pamela Djerassi Bush, who died by suicide in 1978.

In its nearly half-century of operation, the program has come to be recognized as one of the premier artist residencies on the West Coast, with an impressive roster of alumni, including visual artist Lava Thomas and novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen. The program has faced criticism in recent years for alleged mismanagement.

According to the residency’s website, Maxwell Djerassi currently serves as the board’s Secretary, and Molesky is listed as serving on the board’s executive committee.

From 2009 to 2012, Maxwell Djerassi worked as chief of staff and special assistant in the US Department of State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, covering US relations with Arab states, Israel, and Iran, according to his bio. He worked under Hilary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State under President Barack Obama and during her 2008 presidential campaign. (In a February deposition, Clinton’s lawyer stated that Clinton never knew that he was related to Ghislaine Maxwell.)

In response to Hyperallergic’s request for comment, Maxwell Djerassi said, “My childhood friend Michael [Molesky] and I were on a family vacation to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands with my mom who invited us to join the lunch as part of a conference. We had no awareness of Epstein’s heinous crimes and were as horrified as the rest of the world to learn of them years later.”

Maxwell Djerassi and Molesky were both approximately 27 years of age at the time of the visit.

The release of the Epstein files has revealed connections to Epstein across the art world, but few of the identified individuals have faced consequences. In February, David A. Ross, former chair of the School of Visual Arts’ MFA Art Practice Department, resigned from his post after his extensive email exchanges with Epstein were released in the files.

Most prominently, the new trove of files included gruesome allegations against billionaire Leon Black, who paid Epstein for tax and estate planning. Black, who denies the claims, currently remains a trustee at the Museum of Modern Art in New York after stepping down as chairman of the board in 2021.