Dr. Neal Hitch is The Museum of The Aleutians new executive director. The museum’s board of directors unanimously offered him the position last month. And he just signed his contract to begin work on August 15.
Suzi Golodoff — chair of the board — said Hitch stood out from his cover letter
“He said, and I’ll quote here,” Golodoff said. “He says, ‘I have two core beliefs about museums. They should be engaged with and responsive to the needs of their communities and they should be fun.’ And I think a lot of us felt such a sense of relief and excitement over that because it’s kind of what we’re looking for.”
And she thinks he has an amazing set of qualifications.
“He’s really good at stepping into a museum that’s kind of got some challenges or is just getting started or has kind of been on hold and just picking it up and making it shine,” Golodoff said.
Hitch has over 20 years of museum experience. From his current position as director of the Imperial Valley Desert Museum in Ocotillo, California — a museum many believed would never open — to director of the Turks & Caicos National Museum in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Hiring a new executive director has been a long time coming. The museum has been shuttered — all but a handful of days — since the fall when the board placed former director Zoya Johnson on administrative leave after items from the museum’s collection were found in her home.
At this point, the board does not know when the museum will open its doors. But they plan to discuss that at their July 6 meeting.
Zoe Sobel is a reporter with Alaska's Energy Desk based in Unalaska. As a high schooler in Portland, Maine, Zoë Sobel got her first taste of public radio at NPR’s easternmost station. From there, she moved to Boston where she studied at Wellesley College and worked at WBUR, covering sports for Only A Game and the trial of convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
