Anna Marie Tutera hired as new director of Kansas City Museum
The Kansas City Museum finally has a permanent director nearly 10 months after its former director was fired.
Mark McHenry, director of the Kansas City Parks and Recreation Department, confirmed on Thursday that Anna Marie Tutera will join the beleaguered Kansas City Museum.
Denise Morrison served on an interim basis after longtime director Christopher Leitch was fired July 8, the final act in a long-simmering feud between him and Union Station CEO George Guastello. Union Station has been the operator of the city-owned museum, although the Kansas City Parks and Recreation Department will take over that responsibility May 1.
Tutera was previously the executive director of the Wornall/Majors House Museums, which oversees the John Wornall House Museum in Brookside and the Alexander Majors House Museum farther south at 82nd Street and State Line.
Tutera will have her work cut out for her as the Kansas City Museum transitions into city management. Corinthian Hall, the stately mansion in Northeast Kansas City, has been associated with the museum, but is stuck in the middle of renovations after the city earlier committed $10 million to fixing up the property.
Most members of the former Kansas City Museum Advisory Board felt that Union Station neglected the museum and its significance to the Northeast neighborhood.
A 2013 examination of that relationship by The Pitch pointed to deep and longstanding divisions about the future of the museum. Not long afterward, the city and Union Station struck a deal to shift management over to the city, although the city will continue to lease space in Union Station’s storage outlay for museum artifacts.
The Kansas City Museum Advisory Board morphed into the Kansas City Museum Foundation, a nonprofit fundraising arm for the museum. Foundation chairwoman Martha Lally on April 17 sent a letter to McHenry, Mayor Sly James, Kansas City Manager Troy Schulte and others imploring them to reinstate Leitch as museum director, but city leaders opted for Tutera. Leitch stays on as the foundation’s director.
