Historical Society CEO will lead Smithsonian history museum
Anthea M. Hartig, a charismatic historian who breathed life into the venerable California Historical Society, has been hired away by the Smithsonian Institution.
Hartig has been named the Elizabeth MacMillan Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, according to an announcement Thursday. She is the first woman to hold the top position at the museum.
“Anthea’s record as a leader and coalition builder, as well as a student and champion of history, combine to make her an ideal choice to lead one of our most revered museums,” David Skorton, secretary of the Smithsonian, said in a statement.
By leaving CHS, Hartig will exchange a nonprofit with 30 employees and an annual operating budget of $5.2 million for a major national destination on the mall in Washington, D.C. She will oversee 262 employees, a permanent collection of 1.8 million objects and an annual budget of $50 million. She will also oversee the opening of a Latino gallery, a first for the Smithsonian.
“I’m a dedicated public historian and a dedicated public servant, and this position is the highest calling of my profession,” said Hartig, who was born in 1964, the year the American history museum opened.
During her seven-year tenure as executive director and CEO of CHS, Hartig brought the converted hardware store on Mission Street into the 20th century and then zoomed on to the 21st. More than $20 million was raised, the annual budget quadrupled, and a digital library was launched.
But the biggest measure was in attendance at exhibitions, which jumped from a few thousand per show, when Hartig started in 2011, to more than 100,000 who saw an exhibition at the Palace of Fine Arts, tied to the centennial of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, in 2015.
A bold leader and cultural programmer, Hartig had a flair for the dramatic, made evident when she had the CHS building painted International Orange to mark the launch of her first exhibition in February 2012, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge.
For the grand opening, she wore a deep-orange knitted ensemble from the 1930s, with fur and hat, and arrived in a 1937 Cadillac that had been one of the first cars to cross the bridge on its opening day.
“I told the board when they hired me that it was relevance or death for the organization,” she recalled in a phone interview. “CHS holds one of the most important collections about California and the West, but it was underused and underappreciated.”
One of the strengths of the collection is the Spanish Colonial period in California. Hartig brought that to life by borrowing a 10-foot-square adobe wall from the 1840s home of Juana Briones, and having it installed in the gallery on Mission Street.
She also managed to accomplish something that had never happened since the society’s founding in 1871: She got funding from the state of California, which is one of only two states that does not consistently fund its historical society.
In 2016, CHS got a $1 million grant from the State Library to study the feasibility of relocating to the U.S. Mint, opened in 1874 and long underutilized, at the corner of Fifth and Mission streets. That plan, in partnership with the city and county of San Francisco, is still in the works.
“I wouldn’t be ready to make this move, except for the path-breaking work we have done here at the California Historical Society,” she said, “work that I know will continue.”
A third-generation Southern Californian, Hartig is a product of the public school system from kindergarten at Alta Loma Elementary School in Rancho Cucamonga (San Bernardino County), through her doctorate at UC Riverside.
Her two sons are following the tradition. Both graduated from Aragon High School in San Mateo, and are undergrads at UC Berkeley.
Hartig has her eyes on an 1850s row house on Capitol Hill, an easy walk to her new job. Her first day is Feb. 18. In addition to opening the Molina Family Latino Gallery, in 2021, Hartig will also oversee the final phase of a renovated west wing, 120,000 square feet, also to be completed in 2021.
“As we turn the page on a new chapter of the National Museum of American History, we are fortunate to welcome a director whose bold leadership is perfectly suited for the time in which we live and the museum’s increasingly inclusive and innovative programming,” Skorton said.