Jennifer Kilmer will lead the State Capital Museum in Olympia and the Washington State History Museum in downtown Tacoma into the next chapter in their history.
Gig Harbor’s Kilmer will replace retiring State Historical Society director David Nicandri in October. She leaves an eight-year tenure as executive director of the Harbor History Museum, which recently opened in a new location in her hometown after a two-year absence.
Gov. Chris Gregoire made the appointment last week, after the society’s board of trustees recommended Kilmer unanimously from among six finalists. The society runs the museums in Olympia and Tacoma.
The society praised the Oxford-educated Kilmer’s academic credentials – and her fundraising ability, which might be more important since the Tacoma museum says state funding has dropped nearly 40 percent since budget cuts began three years ago.
The Historical Society’s museums were threatened with closure last year, along with the state museum in Spokane. But the Legislature ended up preserving them on a reduced schedule.
The cuts could be revived. But Kilmer will try to convince fellow state leaders that history isn’t a luxury in tough times. Future scientists need to know about the building of the first nuclear bomb, she said. Future politicians need to learn about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
“If you create a generation of learners and thinkers and scientists who don’t have that background in our state and national history, that’s a mistake,” she said.
Kilmer will have at least one natural ally among the Legislature’s budget writers. She’s married to Democratic Sen. Derek Kilmer, chief author of the Senate’s capital-construction budget.
The society will need to raise more money from private sources to make up for budget cuts. To that end, Jennifer Kilmer said she would look to continue recent growth in membership, ramp up the pursuit of large annual gifts of $5,000 or more, and expand outreach to people who might bequeath money to the society in their wills.
Board members were wowed by Kilmer’s drive to raise nearly $12 million for the new Gig Harbor museum on Harborview Drive.
“It seemed to us that Jennifer’s intellect, her experiences with a much smaller museum getting started, and just her ability to articulate, we were very, very impressed,” said Charley Bingham, a board member who led the search.
The old Gig Harbor museum behind a city wastewater treatment plant closed in 2008 to make way for plant expansion, and delays kept the new building from opening until last fall.
“You essentially had the bottom drop out of the economy right in the middle of that campaign, and that certainly delayed efforts,” Kilmer said.
Kilmer is leaving an organization with three full-time and three part-time staff and a projected 15,000 visitors in its first year – as much as 10 times the old location’s attendance, she said. Her new position puts her in charge of a state museum with more than 30 full-time-equivalent staff and about 85,000 visitors last year.
Nicandri said Kilmer would be “an outstanding director.”
The director since 1987, Nicandri heads into retirement Oct. 7 with plans to finish writing a biography of Captain Cook and start work on books about Tacoma’s modern history and Heisman Trophy-winning Oregon State University quarterback Terry Baker.
Jordan Schrader: 360-786-1826
jordan.schrader@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/politics
Staff writer Rosemary Ponnekanti contributed to this story.
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