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Oct. 3--Pat Wolf, longtime director of the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, has been told by the museum's board that if she wants to continue leading the museum, she must reapply for her job. Wolf said Monday that she won't do it.
"I already have the job; why would I apply for my own job?" said Wolf, who has been museum director since 1987.
The museum board has already begun a nationwide search for a new CEO, according to board chairman Joe Griffith. The move -- which has not been publicly acknowledged until now -- has been in the works at least since October 2004, when Mayor Mark Begich appointed the board to streamline museum operations, Griffith said.
"When the new board structure took over, we did so in full knowledge that we would be doing a search for a CEO over the next few years," Griffith said. "Pat Wolf has been serving since that time as the interim CEO."
Griffith said that the board decided it needed to do a search "because we're a business corporation and not a municipal entity; we wanted to step through the right hoops and make sure we had the right person for the job."
The board has tentatively contracted with the San Francisco executive search firm Phillips Oppenheim to run the nationwide search. Representatives from the firm will be meeting with the board on Sunday and Monday next week. Both Wolf and Griffith said it would be premature to set a time frame for how long the search is likely to take.
Wolf says that she had hoped to stay in her position at least through the completion of the museum's pending expansion, "but that's the way things are. It's the board's choice."
The planned $100 million expansion, funded largely by a $50 million gift made in 1999 by Elmer and Mary Louise Rasmuson, will more than double museum's size.
Since 1967, when Wolf first became affiliated with the museum as a volunteer, it has grown from a 10,000-square-foot building housing 60 borrowed Alaska paintings and a collection of 2,500 objects to a building of nearly 70,000 square feet, housing more than 20,000 objects, more than 350,000 historical photographs and an art collection valued at nearly $6 million.
Once the new CEO is selected, Wolf said, "I would hope to have a conversation with them about what role I might play as far as helping with the expansion or helping them on special projects and so forth."
Griffith said that he feels this would be a possibility -- that Wolf "has great experience; I'm sure there will be some role for her here. She's got 30 years of experience. Who knows? She may apply for the position."
When asked whether she would submit her resume to be considered, Wolf said: "That didn't make sense to me the first time Joe said it. I haven't submitted an application (for the CEO position), and I don't intend to."
Julie Decker, who has served on the museum's building committee -- a body that has been intimately involved in the development of the expansion plans--is concerned that the board's timing for its search may have been poorly chosen.
Decker said she understands the board's reasoning -- that now is the time for a new person to come on board, when so many decisions need to be made about staffing, operations and the new building.
However, she said, "I worry about Pat's departure creating a loss of institutional memory, a loss of relationships with donors, supporters and partners and other things that might hurt progress."
Decker also worries that the board's decision isn't taking sufficient account of the part Wolf has played in shepherding the museum to its current position.
"She's the person who's brought the museum to this place where it's possible for us to imagine this kind of expansion in the first place," Decker said. "I'd like to see her be the person who cuts the ribbon on the new building, whether that's in the role of director or not."
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Copyright (c) 2006, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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