N.H. Museum Appoints New Director

The New Haven Museum has named Margaret Anne Tockarshewsky its new executive director. Tockarshewsky began working in that capacity on February 1, according to a press release issued by the organization.

Tockarshewsky effectively succeeds Walter Miller, former president of the organization’s Board of Directors, who’d served as executive director on an interim basis since December 2009. Miller took over for William Hosley, who lost the directorship amid concerns over the museum’s improper use of funds earmarked for the preservation of the Pardee-Morris House.

Michelle Cheng, the museum’s education director, said on Tuesday that the organization assembled a search committee in 2011 to find a new executive director.

Tockarshewsky, Cheng said, ​“came from a really diverse background from all sorts of cultural sites,” and that her public relations and communications experience appealed to the committee.

“She was so well-rounded … in terms of all sorts of different experiences” from which any museum would benefit, Cheng said.

“Ms. Tockarshewsky,” the New Haven Museum’s press release indicates, ​“spent more than 12 years working at Queens Botanical Garden … and (more recently) has worked … as interim director of the Bayside Historical Society, headquarted in the 1887 Officers’ Club at Fort Totten in Queens. Ms. Tockarshewsky attended the Museum Management Institute of the Getty Leadership Institute and … has also served as a grant reviewer for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Queens Council on the Arts.”

Charles Granquist, who chaired the above-mentioned search committee, was quoted in the New Haven Museum’s press release as saying, ​“The search for a new executive director attracted a pool of extraordinarily talented applicants. … Of those, Margaret Anne Tockarshewsky stood out for her professionalism, vision, and ability to move the organization forward at an exciting time in the history of the museum.”