As Terrence Riley steps down as director of Miami Art Museum, there are a few things he will not miss.

The endless commission meetings.

The begging for money.

The penny pinching to make ends meet.

Riley delivered the news to museum staff Monday morning that he is leaving the top post at MAM to return to his first love, architecture.

His announcement caught Miami's arts community by surprise, but Riley said he is keeping some of the best parts of the job by remaining as a consultant for MAM's new $220 million home, to be built in Bicentennial Park.

``You're either on the horse or off the horse,'' said Riley, who submitted his resignation letter to MAM trustees last week. ``At this point, it was either to stay another four years or to leave at a juncture that worked very well for me and very well for the project.''

Riley steps down as director at a critical moment: The museum's leaders are preparing to turn architectural ideas and drawings into a building on one of the last pieces of publicly owned waterfront in downtown Miami.

Aaron Podhurst, MAM's board chairman, said he will form a search committee for a new director but emphasized that Riley will remain in Miami to help shepherd the project.

MAM's new building has completed the design stage, Podhurst said, and is scheduled to break ground in late spring or early summer 2010. He projects the 120,000-square-foot building will open in 2013.

``Now we start actually doing contractual work with the contractors, subcontractors and all that kind of stuff,'' Podhurst said.

Podhurst said Riley will help MAM ``on the city and county relations, and the science museum and all the things you have to put together in Museum Park to do this.''

He declined to provide details of the consulting contract, such as Riley's pay. But, Podhurst said of the agreement, ``It's fair to Terry. It's fair to the museum.''

An architect by training, Riley joined MAM in March 2006. Though he'll remain in Miami, he longed to return to practicing architecture with his firm, Keenan/Riley Architects, based in New York.

MAM's board of trustees recruited Riley from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he had served as chief curator for architecture and design, and played a key role in MOMA's $858 million renovation and expansion.

Riley was hired with a mandate: convince collectors that MAM will have a new building, and grow the museum's collection to merit the higher profile; that the museum staff would be enhanced; and that MAM would become a partner with collectors.

Riley said new leadership may pave the way for future partnerships.

``A new director who could devote as much energy to building the collection as I have to building the building,'' he said, ``not only will make this a great structure, but will make it a great museum.''

In leading the new museum project, Riley helped commission the Pritzker Prize-winning architectural firmof Herzog & de Meuronto design the new MAM,negotiated with city and county officials for funding and raised money from private donors.

But he also butted heads with critics of public funding for the museum, such as Miami art collector Martin Z. Margulies.

Margulies said MAM will have a difficult time raising money, particularly in the wake of the recession.

``The biggest museums, and the best museums that have great collections, they're cutting staff,''

MAM has handled its finances in much the same manner as other museums this past year. In April, Riley cut MAM's budget 10 percent, or $650,000, by laying off three employees, imposing one-week furloughs on full-time staff and reducing executive salaries and the number of temporary exhibitions.

Then, in September, Riley learned that due to budget cuts, MAM would receive about half of an estimated $1 million annual subsidy from Miami-Dade, which owns the museum's current home in downtown Miami's Government Center.

Riley said he leaves the job with very few regrets. One is that he didn't do enough to muster the support of Miami's art heavyweights.

Of the three Miami collectors included in the 2009 ARTnews 200 Top Collectors (a sort of Fortune 500 for the art world), none is officially associated with MAM.

Margulies, who is listed in the Top 200 along with Irma and Norman Braman, and Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz, said he guessed that there is not enough private support locally for the new MAM.

``He comes from a New York institution, and he's used to seeing big money,'' Margulies said of Riley, ``and there's no such thing in this community. And that's why the big collectors are not involved with that institution.''

Riley said Monday that fundraising for the new MAM is ``going very well,'' adding that the museum has raised more than $45 million in pledges toward a $120 million goal. The remaining $100 million will come from public funds.

Riley would not say how many MAM trustees have given to the new building, but he has pledged more than one-third of his 2006 salary of $286,000. He said he would pay his pledge over five years.

Also, the museum is about to adopt a new policy requiring a financial contributionfrom each board member, he said.

The Museum Park Plan, which includes new homes for MAM, the Miami Science Museum and the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, relies on more than $280 million in public money, including $275 million approved by Miami-Dade voters in 2004, $5 million endorsed by Miami voters in 2001, and about $1 million in federal and state grants.

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