Chief Named for Museums

Jane G. Pisano, USC’s senior vice president for external relations, has been named executive director of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, effective the fall of 2001.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is expected to confirm Pisano, 57, a museum trustee, as successor to James L. Powell, 65, who has led the museum since 1994. Powell announced in January that he would step down as soon as a successor was found.

At the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County--the title of a family of museums including the Natural History Museum, the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits and the William S. Hart Museum and Ranch in Newhall--one of Pisano’s first tasks will be to launch fund-raising for a new, $100-million-plus reconstruction and renovation of the aging Natural History Museum in Exposition Park, which opened its doors in 1913.

In an interview, Pisano said she is also determined to raise the community profile of the Natural History Museum. “This is an institution that is a well-kept secret in the community, where there has been incredibly distinguished research, where there are fabulous collections, and probably the largest public education program of any natural history museum in the country,” she said. “What I really want to do is work with the board to shift the museum from being a quiet, inward-looking place into an institution that is a magnet for scholars, and a magnet for the community.

“That’s going to require more resources, more changes in the way the museum does business, and more partnering with organizations that are national, international and local. All of that is tantalizingly exciting.”

Richard Roeder, president of the museum’s board of trustees, said a professional executive search firm and members of the board conducted a six-month international search before tapping Pisano. “On the board, I appointed her to a strategic planning committee, and that committee has done a really terrific job,” Roeder said. “Seeing her planning skills in action made me see how she could apply them to what a museum of the future could be. She has a lot of passion and dedication.”

Roeder believes those skills are ideal for the ambitious Natural History Museum reconstruction. Roeder said the project will not be a complete teardown, but seismic safety concerns led the museum board and county representatives to decide a year ago to replace much of the existing structure instead of retrofitting it to meet current seismic codes.

“Almost all of the dollars would have gone to infrastructure, things nobody could see,” Roeder said. “It is more efficient, for the same amount of money, to build a new building. We hope to refurbish and highlight the historical parts of the building, and meld those historic elements with a more modern structure that takes advantage of all the advances in museum presentation that have been made in the last 80 years.”

Roeder said museum leadership spent a year and a half exploring the idea of building an entirely new museum in a new location, but “we decided six months ago that our mission could best be accomplished by staying in Exposition Park, and recommitting to the downtown community. Given the size of the project we’re embarking on here, we felt a fiduciary responsibility to see if there were alternatives that made sense, but in the end concluded the best option was our own backyard.”

Roeder predicted the reconstruction will take five to 10 years to realize; besides fund-raising, the process will include selecting an architect through a competition. “This also presents the very difficult logistic chore of managing, reconfiguring, representing and storing well over 33 million unique specimens, with temperature control needs and other issues,” Roeder added.

A native of Bethesda, Md., Pisano holds a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and a PhD in international relations from Johns Hopkins University. She has served as a White House fellow, a management consultant and a Times Mirror Co. executive. Before joining USC in 1991 as dean of the School of Public Administration, she served as president of the Los Angeles 2000 Committee, formed in 1985 by then-Mayor Tom Bradley to conduct a broad study of governance, transportation and pollution control in Southern California.

As USC’s liaison to its neighborhood, Pisano has overseen high-profile community programs that led Time magazine to name the university its 2000 “College of the Year” for having “one of the most ambitious social outreach programs in the country.”

“The leadership of that was very clearly Jane Pisano,” said USC President Steven Sample. “This is a very, very big loss for USC, but ... I think it’s a good move. Besides, she’ll ... be right across the street. And I think she’ll retain an academic position at USC, so the ties will be very close.”