[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/john-phelan-.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tSecretary of the Navy John Phelan, who has appeared on multiple editions of ARTnews<\/em>\u2019s Top 200 Collectors list, is stepping down from his position. Undersecretary Hung Cao will become acting secretary, according to a short post on X by Sean Parnell, chief Pentagon spokesperson.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile Parnell\u2019s statement contained little information about Phelan\u2019s departure, the New York Times<\/em> characterized it as a \u201cfiring,\u201d saying that it followed months of disagreements with senior members of the Department of Defense over how to revamp the Navy\u2019s shipbuilding program. Phelan is the latest cabinet secretary to leave during President Donald Trump\u2019s second term. Earlier this week, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned amid allegations of abuse of power, per the Associated Press. <\/p>\n \n\tPer the Times<\/em>, Phelan got caught between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, the latter of whom progressively took over Phelan\u2019s responsibilities in the shipbuilding effort. Phelan had repeatedly pushed for an initiative called\u2014not kidding<\/em>\u2014\u201cGolden Fleet\u201d with an aim to build\u2014again, not a joke<\/em>\u2014a \u201cTrump-class\u201d of battleships.<\/p>\n \n\tThe timing of Phelan\u2019s departure would seem to back up the idea that this was not planned. On Tuesday, Phelan met with media to discuss the shipbuilding effort, according to the Military Times<\/em>, which noted that he also delivered a keynote address at the Navy League\u2019s annual Sea-Air-Space symposium.<\/p>\n \n\tPhelan, founder of Palm Beach\u2013based private investment firm Rugger Management, brought no military experience to the role but had significant ties to the art world. (For more than two decades, he also ran Michael Dell\u2019s private office.) His contemporary art collection, housed between properties in Aspen, Colorado, and Palm Beach, Florida, includes works by Andreas Gursky, Lisa Yuskavage, Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Jenny Holzer, and Marilyn Minter.<\/p>\n \n\tPhelan\u2019s path into the Trump White House was paved with major donations, both to Trump\u2019s 2024 campaign and to Republican candidates. As previously reported by ARTnews<\/em>, Phelan donated over $1.8 million in 2024 to Republican candidates, parties, and political action committees. He and his wife Amy, with whom he collects art, held a fundraising dinner at their Aspen home that year, raising $12 million for the Trump campaign. Attendees were required to give donations of $25,000 to $500,000 per couple for attendance; guests included casino mogul and major art collector Steve Wynn and Texas governor Greg Abbott, among others.<\/p>\n \n\tPhelan has served as a board member of the Aspen Art Museum, where Amy serves on the national council, and the couple held membership on the North American acquisitions council of the Tate museums and the contemporary art council of the Museum of Modern Art. Their Aspen property was once a requisite gathering place for the art world in Aspen, hosting WineCrush until 2019. More recently, it hosted a 2022 amfAR gala that raised $5.3 million for AIDS research.<\/p>\n \n\tPhelan was confirmed as Navy Secretary in March 2025, by a 62\u201330 vote. His tenure, in the end, lased just 13 months.<\/p>\n \n\tPhelan previously faced scrutiny in February when flight logs in the so-called Epstein files showed that he flew on the private jet of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2006, just four months before Epstein was indicated in Florida on felony solicitation of prostitution. A friend of Phelan\u2019s told CNN<\/em>, which broke that story, that the flight was the only time Phelan interacted with Epstein, and had been invited on the flight by then-CEO of Bear Stearns Jimmy Cayne. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/john-phelan-navy-secretary-fired-art-collector-1234782371\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/john-phelan-.jpg?w=1024″] Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, who has appeared on multiple editions of ARTnews\u2019s Top 200 Collectors list, is stepping down from his position. Undersecretary Hung Cao will become acting secretary, according to a short post on X by Sean Parnell, chief Pentagon spokesperson. While Parnell\u2019s statement contained little information about Phelan\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1897976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1897976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1897976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1897976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1897976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}