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I feel fairly certain that you — probably an Angeleno in place or heart — have heard a lot more about the Natural History Museum of LA in recent years. It's a pretty good bet that you have been to the museum in Exposition Park sometime in the last few years, and may not have been there for many years before that. For you, this is news. Jane Pisano, the president of NHMLA since 2001, and who oversaw the rebuilding that opened the museum up to the Expo Line and USC side of the park, announced today that she will retire once the board finds a replacement. The Natural History Museum, which occupies a 1913 Beaux-Arts building beside the Coliseum, is LA's oldest dedicated museum building and under Pisano has become a pretty cool 21st Century space.
DR. JANE G. PISANO, TRANSFORMATIVE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY, ANNOUNCES HER INTENTION TO RETIRE
Will Leave NHM Poised for the Future with Reimagined and Revitalized
Programs and Facilities, Heightened Civic Presence and Record Attendance,
Membership and FundraisingLOS ANGELES, CA, Sept. 8, 2014 — Sarah Meeker Jensen, President of the Board of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and Paul G. Haaga, Jr., Chairman, today announced that Dr. Jane G. Pisano has informed the Board of her intention to retire as President and Director of the institution she has led since 2001. Dr. Pisano is credited with having transformed NHM—inside and out—into a premier cultural destination and nature experience in Los Angeles, and a national leader in uniting scientific research with public education.
To ensure a seamless transition into the future, Dr. Pisano will continue to lead the NHM Family of Museums—NHM in Exposition Park, the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits and the William S. Hart Park and Museum—until a new Director has been selected. Sarah Meeker Jensen, Paul Haaga and fellow Board member Richard Volpert are forming a Trustee committee to begin an extensive international search to identify potential successors.
Dr. Pisano’s announcement follows the successful completion of a decade-long initiative that remade virtually every aspect of the museum in time for the 100th anniversary celebration in 2013. Physically and programmatically, she restored NHM’s magnificent original 1913 Building (L.A.’s first dedicated museum structure) and its adjoining buildings; brought new light into its renovated spaces; led the creation of a range of award-winning new permanent exhibitions; constructed new facilities including the Otis Booth Pavilion and doubled the museum’s combined indoor and outdoor public space. Organizationally, she has built a collaborative, visitor-oriented culture among all of NHM’s staff, instilling new purpose and vitality throughout the institution. The result has been the transformation of NHM into an interactive, dynamic center for public engagement, visitor experiences and scientific enlightenment about our natural and cultural worlds.
As the NHM Next transformation moved toward realization, Dr. Pisano was also bolstering the scientific program of the Page Museum, heightening the museum’s engagement with the public and ensuring the protection and preservation of the La Brea Tar Pits for future generations. As she brings her tenure to completion she will continue to focus on supporting and improving this part of the NHM Family of Museums to bring her work to completion.
Sarah Meeker Jensen stated, “Jane Pisano’s achievements have positioned this institution for an extraordinary new phase of scientific work and public engagement. We are more than grateful to Jane for leaving the Museum in solid financial shape and with an excellent senior team. We are eager to honor her in the best way possible, by carrying forward the great work she has done. As we begin the international search for a new Director, we are thankful to be able to continue to work with Jane, as the Next Decade Committee develops the strategic plan for the future of the NHM Family of Museums.”
Paul Haaga stated, “Very few leaders anywhere transform their institutions as thoroughly as Jane Pisano has changed NHM, and very few leave so large and remarkable a legacy. While we will miss Jane’s leadership enormously, her inclusive management style ensures that we have a strong team remaining in place to further the Museum’s mission and address our ongoing challenges. We cannot adequately express our gratitude to her.”
Mark Ridley-Thomas, Supervisor of the Second District of Los Angeles County, stated, “Jane Pisano said it best herself, when she took the helm of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and dedicated this institution to inspiring wonder, discovery and responsibility for our natural and cultural worlds. She has done just that, working tirelessly to make learning fun and accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds. I hope that all our citizens will join me in recognizing what she has achieved for us.”
Dr. Jane G. Pisano stated, “I have been enormously fortunate to have worked for more than a dozen years with wonderfully dedicated and far-sighted Trustees and Governors, understanding and supportive County Supervisors, donors and members who have been generous at every level and, above all, a brilliantly talented staff. Everything that’s been done at NHM is an accomplishment we share together. I look forward now to handing over this great institution to its leader for the next generation.”
The Board’s selection committee has not yet established a schedule for identifying a successor to Dr. Pisano. Further information on the search process will be provided as it becomes available.
Transforming NHMDr. Pisano has announced her impending retirement at a moment when the museums of the NHM Family are stronger than at any time in their history.
The NHM Family of Museums is enjoying record attendance, totaling 1,140,000 visitors at all three locations from July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014. At NHM itself, attendance has soared 63 percent since 2010, from some 487,000 visits per year to 793,000. Revenue from admissions and programs has risen an even more dramatic 133 percent during that same period, to $3.4 million a year. The Page Museum continues to experience robust attendance as well, with 348,000 visits in 2013-14. Membership is at an all-time high (33,600 as of June 2014), and fundraising hit record levels in 2013 with the centennial celebration and the Dino Ball, with NHM bringing in an annual fund total of $7.3 million in contributions.
Even more impressive than these figures, though, is the institution-wide effort that made them possible: the decade-long, $135 million project that Dr. Pisano initiated and led to remake NHM for the next century.
The first signs of the transformation became visible in 2009 with the re-opening of NHM’s historic 1913 Beaux-Arts building in Exposition Park, following a seismic retrofit and thorough architectural restoration and renovation. The opening of new exhibitions followed in 2010, notably in the 1913 Building’s Haaga Family Rotunda (under the restored Walter Lees Judson stained-glass skylight) and the completely redesigned Age of Mammals in The Ahmanson Hall, the first permanent museum exhibition anywhere to trace 65 million years of evolution within the context of epochal changes in the Earth’s geology and climate.
In July 2011, NHM’s all-new Dinosaur Hall opened with Thomas the T. rex as part of the world’s only Tyrannosaurus rex growth series (featuring a baby, juvenile and sub-adult T. rex) as its centerpiece. The award-winning exhibition has been lauded for its emphasis on great specimens, spectacular installation designs, and a “how we know what we know” exhibition approach.
That same year, timed to greet an in-flux of visitors for the new exhibition halls, new facilities including the new NHM Car Park, an outdoor dining area and the pedestrian bridge front entrance, became the first elements of an outdoor transformation.
The vision of creating gardens where scientific discovery would be joined by the appreciation of nature came closer to realization in June 2013, when the Nature Gardens as a whole were opened—making NHM an indoor-outdoor museum for the first time, and providing an active field site where visitors could become citizen scientists—along with the new Nature Lab, a hands-on center of investigation for people of all ages. In the center of it all was NHM’s gleaming new entrance and gathering place, the Otis Booth Pavilion, standing like a beacon onto Exposition Boulevard.
In July 2013, one month after the Pavilion opened, NHM debuted its new permanent exhibition Becoming Los Angeles, telling the intertwined stories of cultural and ecological shifts in the development of Los Angeles and the region. To complete the transformation of NHM within the centennial year, the museum inaugurated its new galleries for temporary exhibitions in December 2013, resuming its special exhibition program.
While Dr. Pisano was bringing this project to completion in Exposition Park, she was also ramping up activities at the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits. During her tenure as President and Director, scientists at the Page Museum stepped up their work at Pit 91 and with Project 23—the excavation of enormous, intact blocks of asphaltic deposits lifted from the site—uncovering more than 70,000 specimens, including a nearly intact Columbian mammoth fossil.
To further the goal of making the scientific research at the Tar Pits exciting and relevant to today’s public, Dr. Pisano and her team celebrated 100 Years of Digging at the Page Museum in October 2013. While showcasing many of the best-known specimens from Rancho La Brea, the initaitive also raised awareness of the new scientific emphasis on microfossils and the study of the Tar Pits as an ongoing ecological system.
Dr. Pisano has led NHM’s recent discussions with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art concerning the proposed design of LACMA’s new building and its possible effect on the living ecosystem of the Tar Pits. While the search for a new President and Director is ongoing, Dr. Pisano will continue to work to ensure the long-term preservation of the site as a source of knowledge and wonder, and to elevate the Page Museum as both a research center and a major visitor destination.
About Dr. Jane G. PisanoJane Pisano grew up in Washington, D.C. and earned her bachelor’s degree in political science from Stanford University and her master’s degree and doctorate in international relations from Johns Hopkins University. She began her career at Georgetown University, where she served as Assistant Professor in the School of Foreign Service and Department of Government. She was selected to be a White House Fellow in 1976 and served for the next year as Special Assistant for National Security Affairs.
Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Dr. Pisano took a leadership role with the Los Angeles 2000 Committee, serving as both its Executive Director and President and directing the Olympic Programs for the Times Mirror Company. During this period she also served as a Trustee of the 2000 Partnership.
Upon her return to academic life, she was appointed Dean of the School of Public Administration at the University of Southern California, where she also was appointed a tenured full professor and the first occupant of the C. Erwind and Ione L. Piper Dean’s Chair of Public Administration. Dr. Pisano was appointed Vice President for External Relations of USC in 1994 and Senior Vice President for External Relations in 1998. She was named President and Director of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in 2001.
Dr. Pisano has served on numerous boards and civic organizations, including the boards of the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation, the California Community Foundation and WellPoint, Inc.
Among the awards and honors that Dr. Pisano has received are Los Angeles Magazine’s Woman of the Year Award 2013, Los Angeles Business Journal Nonprofit Leadership Excellence Award 2013, the National Public Service Award (2006), honorary doctorates from Loyola Marymount University (1989) and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (1999) and designation as one of the 200 Men and Women of Achievement named on the occasions of the Los Angeles Bicentennial celebration (1981).
