Cheptoo Kositany-Buckner, the American Jazz Museum’s new director, is eager to collaborate

Next year will mark two decades since the American Jazz Museum opened. And 2017 contains plenty of other milestones, as the museum’s new executive director, Cheptoo Kositany-Buckner notes.

“It’s the hundredth birthday of Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie,” she says. “One hundred years ago next year, Scott Joplin died. Can you imagine programming exhibits around that? We can have those exhibits travel, because this is national and international.” (The big dates are fresh in her memory — “I had to do the research for the job interview,” she says, with a big, room-filling laugh.)

Kositany-Buckner’s appointment was announced January 21, ending several months of flux for the American Jazz Museum. Greg Carroll, who held the post for eight years, resigned last July; former Sprint executive Ralph Reid has been interim CEO since then. When Kositany-Buckner takes over, in early March, she’ll bring with her considerable nonprofit experience, having spent the past 25 years with the Kansas City Public Library, where she rose from network administrator in the IT department to deputy director. She has served on the board of the Black Archives of Mid-America, and in Janaury 2015 she received a President’s Award from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City; this past November, she received the Lucile H. Bluford Special Achievement Award from the Kansas City Chapter of the NAACP.

So when she says that 2017 will be “a key year for the jazz museum and the 18th and Vine district,” there’s reason to adjust expectations for a part of the community more talked-about than visited.

“We wanted to have a proven executive leader that had the track record of taking on complex projects and executing them successfully,” says Trey Runnion, chairman of the museum’s board of directors. “We needed someone who was actively involved in everything, who was at the table making decisions in a collaborative way.” Someone, he adds, with “the style and personality to relate to the neighborhoods, to the cultural institutions that make up the district, to musicians, and to the board.”

Singer Angela Hagenbach, for one, sounds confindent that the search found the right target. She met Kositany-Buckner during the library’s recent production of JazzAlice, and she describes the new director as “dynamic and a force to reckon with.”

Kositany-Buckner was born and raised in Kenya, one of 11 children. After high school she followed two brothers to the University of Central Missouri, where she graduated with a degree in computer information systems. At the library, she led digital inclusion efforts, bringing broadband access outside the library to Kansas City School District students, and supervised design and renovation of the library’s L.H. Bluford Branch and the Truman Forum auditorium at the Plaza Branch.

She points to a pink hardhat sitting on a shelf in her office. “I was the lady in charge,” she says, smiling.

Now, she’s in charge of a museum that has earned an unwanted reputation for worn and unchanging exhibits that don’t always work. “They were done 18 years ago,” she says of those stations. “We need to be thinking about what the 21st-century museum looks like. I’m very interested in how we utilize technology. Is the content that we develop for exhibits portable to different media formats as the technology changes?”

The excitement in her voice builds. “The Jazz Museum is a gigabit museum. The Black Archives has a gigabit connection. The Lincoln building has a gigabit connection. How do we take that technology to create a virtual tour for the museum or connect to other digital content? The potential is huge.”

So are, she understands, the challenges. “The city is our biggest customer right now,” she says. “We’ve got to make sure we’re using the city’s money so they can see that we’re changing what is happening in the district and the jazz museum. The museum has a lot of amenities. First and foremost is promoting aggressively what we’re doing right now. One of the things that was very clear as I went through the interview process is people don’t know what’s going on.”

When I ask Kositany-Buckner how she’ll address that, she tells me that collaboration will be crucial to realizing the museum’s potential. “You look at the place and you see this cradle of African-American history in Kansas City in one small area,” she says. “Black Archives, Jazz Museum, Negro Leagues [Museum], The Call, Lincoln Building, Parade Park, Paseo YMCA — you could go on and on and on. That is a strength we need to take advantage of and leverage. We cannot do it individually. I don’t know that any cultural institution can be an island anymore. Specifically at 18th and Vine, the strength of that district could be so powerful if we really work together and package what we are doing.”

She cites an example. “Alvin Ailey used Kansas City jazz to produce some of his pieces, like ‘For Charlie With Love.’ There’s a Mary Lou Williams piece, there’s a Count Basie piece and a Jay McShann piece. The Black Archives is the only institution in the world that has the personal papers of Alvin Ailey. They’re on permanent loan. You have the Friends of Alvin Ailey up the street. That is so powerful. Can you imagine if we did a programming series related to showcasing the documents of Ailey and doing a performance at the jazz museum with the Friends of Alvin Ailey? That’s just a small example of how we could partner as African-American institutions.”

Her vision for museum partnerships extends beyond Kansas City. “The Jazz Museum is an affiliate of the Smithsonian,” she says. “That is a relationship we need to take advantage of. We could work with the Smithsonian to bring some state of the art exhibits. Another is the National Endowment for the Arts. They choose jazz masters. We should be bringing them to Kansas City.

“Yes, some things did not work,” Kositany-Buckner admits. “But it’s like a child. If a child makes a mistake, you don’t disown him. You try to walk with him and guide him. I think right now, the stars are aligned. You have the city behind us with some reinvestment in the district. I think with my leadership and my passion and my excitement, my risk-taking and my connection to the larger community, this is the time to come together and make this succeed.”