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After considering 38 cities, including Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., the society settled on the former home of its current executive director, Rick Fosbrink, where it plans to rent space in the Smithsonian-affiliated Heinz History Center while gearing up to eventually build its own museum, the National Center for Theatre History.
For decades, the society got along with a single staff member—executive director Richard Sklenar—a minuscule budget, and a lot of volunteer help from its members. But Sklenar retired four years ago, not long after several members died and left the historical society some substantial money (including nearly $1 million alone from a member named Ken Lufkin). Fosbrink was hired, and, members say, expenses began to rise. (Fosbrink, whisking through the 2015 finances at the meeting without the benefit of PowerPoint or slides, reported a deficit of more than $200,000.)
But members say they weren’t consulted about the move or involved in the selection process, and haven’t approved it. Ward Miller, executive director of Preservation Chicago and a former historical society board member, says he reached out to several Chicago institutions with the hope of brokering a move to the city, but that those efforts weren’t fruitful. He left the board last year “after it became clear to me that decisions had already been made.” That was a disappointment, Miller says: “This is a great Chicago asset that should remain in Chicago.”
Speakers who took the floor to defend the board included Morrison’s wife, Deborah Kinzer. She suggested that all this dissent is merely the result of “hurt feelings” fomented by a previous board president who was not at the meeting.
