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A cherished antique needs polishing, and skilled new director probably will© St. Petersburg Times published February 3, 2002 Jan Luth has been hired as the new director of Heritage Village, Pinellas' unique historic museum/village near Largo. She is likely to earn every penny of her $70,000 annual salary. Waiting for Luth is an open-air museum that has great potential but has been held back by a lack of professional management and problems with financing and recordkeeping. A county audit conducted last year recommended almost 50 changes in procedures at Heritage Village. The audit found that nonprofit groups involved at Heritage Village solicited donations there without a permit, expenditures did not have enough oversight, there were unaddressed safety problems in the park, and there was no written restoration plan for the historic structures that have been moved to the park. The county has begun to address some of the audit issues, but there is plenty left for Luth to straighten out. And the list of problems unearthed in the audit doesn't begin to address issues that relate to maintenance of the village's artifacts, training of the staff and volunteers, and the quality of Heritage Village's programming. In hiring Luth, the county has found someone uniquely qualified to tackle the challenges at Heritage Village. Luth, 46, has degrees in anthropology and historical administration. Even better, she has 20 years of experience as a staff member or administrator in five museums in North Carolina, West Virginia, Indiana and Florida. Most recently, Luth was vice president of programs at Tampa's Museum of Science & Industry for six years. She went to MOSI after two years as director of the St. Petersburg Museum of History. Luth, who lives in St. Petersburg, also worked for a county history museum in Wilmington, N.C., and for the West Virginia State Museum in Charleston, W. Va. Her most applicable experience might be as the assistant curator of the Angel Mounds state historic site in Evansville, Ind., in the 1980s. The Angel Mounds site is a 500-acre complex that includes an interpretive center and 10 reconstructed buildings, plus 11 earthen mounds with historic value. Luth was a sort of jack-of-all-trades there, coordinating programs, managing public relations and volunteers, and writing grants and fundraising proposals. Luth will need all those skills at Heritage Village. One of her greatest challenges could be to organize the administration and programs while maintaining the support of a large cadre of volunteers who have worked long and hard at the village. Change can be difficult in any setting. At Heritage Village, which is 25 years old and had only one director before Luth, things have been done the same way for a long time. In accepting the job, Luth has been instructed by her new bosses to bring needed changes as soon as possible. It might help the volunteers and staff at Heritage Village to know that Luth, as a Pinellas resident since 1993, has often visited the village. Walking under the trees and touring the preserved historic structures, she often wondered what it would be like to be director there and help the facility realize its full potential, she said. It might also help people to know that Luth considers history "a passion." Even her hobbies, spinning and weaving, reflect her interest in history, and much of her career has been devoted to finding ways to make history as fascinating for others as it is for her.
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From the Times South Pinellas desks |
