A prominent art curator in San Francisco has resigned following an uproar over comments he made during a staff meeting vowing not to exclude White male artists.

Gary Garrels, the senior curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), announced his resignation Saturday and apologized for his “extremely poor choice of words” after he mentioned “reverse discrimination,” or the discrimination of White people, during an all-staff Zoom meeting, Artnet News reported.

His resignation came after a person claiming to be an employee at the museum wrote in an Instagram post, “During an SFMOMA all-staff meeting, the white senior curator was giving a presentation about a group of new acquisitions by POC artists. He ended the presentation by saying, ‘Don’t worry, we will definitely still continue to collect white artists.’”