Don’t expect any exotic critters beneath the Macculloch Hall Historical Museum. But Pongracz hopes to bring that same sense of excitement to visitors at the Morristown landmark when she becomes its executive director on Sept. 1, 2015.
Growing Macculloch Hall’s programs for kids will be a priority, said the Boonton Township native, recounting her early forays to the Newark Museum, the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she just completed a year-long fellowship.
“When I was a child, what really made an impression was just how beautiful they were,” she said. “You walked into these buildings, and you knew they were something special.”
Macculloch Hall trustees think they have found someone special in Pongracz, a former curator at New York’s Museum of Biblical Art. They are hoping she can work some miracles in Morristown, where their museum on Macculloch Avevnue draws about 4,300 visitors a year.
“These are challenging times,” said Jock Clark, president of the Macculloch Hall board. So-called “old house” museums across the northeast are struggling because of dwindling endowments and changing public tastes, he said.
Clark said Pongracz’s education, contacts and knowledge of “big-time museum operations” make her well suited to showcase things that make Macculloch Hall more than just a stately 205-year-old old home — starting with its unrivaled collection of works by Thomas Nast, the muckraking Morristown cartoonist who helped bring down New York’s infamous Boss Tweed.
“She’s the ideal fit. I’m so excited for the future of the museum,” added longtime trustee Alice Cutler, who has served as interim director since Carrie Fellows stepped down last September to lead the Hunterdon County Culture and Heritage Commission.
Another trustee, Trish Grushkin, said Pongracz grasps the importance of programming for a variety of age groups.
“Her passion for the museum is huge,” Grushkin said. “She did her homework.”
TIFFANY WINDOWS, BIBLICAL ART
A graduate of Boonton High School, Pongracz went to the University of the Holy Cross and earned a doctorate from Brown University in the history of art and architecture, specializing in the medieval period.
She is writing a book about Tiffany synagogue windows, based on her research as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Met’s American Wing.
In addition to expanding Macculloch Hall’s youth education programs, Pongracz wants to digitize the Nast collection, and raise the venue’s profile in the museum world.
She forged many of her contacts in the historical community as curator of New York’s former Museum of Biblical Art, which relied on loaned artworks for its exhibitions. She served there for 14 years, until 2013.
As of last year, records show, Macculloch Hall had assets of just under $1 million. Revenues were just shy of $400,000, mostly from foundations, and from fundraisers, a state grant and visitor- and program fees.
Besides Pongracz, the staff consists of a full-time curator and part-time education director. The museum has about 200 members, and 45 volunteers, counting trustees, Cutler said.
Visitors can say hello to Pongracz on Sept. 13, 2015, at a meet-and-greet in the Macculloch Hall garden following a 4:30 pm talk by historian Linda Barth, whose topic will be the Delaware & Raritan Canal.
And Pongracz will be involved in Whiskey & Wardrobes, the museum’s $150-per-ticket fundraising fashion show at the Kellogg Club in Morristown on Oct 10. Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick are the honorary chairpersons.
TELLING THE MUSEUM’S BACKSTORY
Macculloch Hall’s largest contributor is a foundation started by the late W. Parsons Todd, a businessman and former Morristown mayor who established the museum in 1950, a year after acquiring the three-acre property that includes an entrancing garden.
Certainly, the original owners — George Macculloch, who created the Morris Canal early in the 19th century, and his wife Louisa, who helped start Morristown’s first social services network — are noteworthy.
- A glimpse of life in Morristown’s Gilded Age: W. Parsons Todd, who would become mayor, and founder of the Macculloch Hall Historical Museum, ran a mining company.
But Clark contends there is an equally compelling story in Todd, who collected antique rugs, silver, and porcelain items, with a keen eye for treasures from fading estates of Morristown’s Gilded Age.
Todd was part of a movement dating to the 1920s, “when affluent Americans began to recognize American fine art needed to be preserved and celebrated,” Clark said.
Pongracz, he said, appreciates Todd as “a fabulous example of what those people were doing,” and has ideas about promoting that history.
Clark also praised Cutler, a trustee for more than 25 years, for boosting membership by 25 percent during her second tour of duty as interim director.
“Alice has done a fantastic job,” said Clark, noting that Cutler stepped up to the plate despite family obligations and commitments to various boards and the Garden Club of Morristown.
Cutler anticipates a long and happy run for Pongracz. And then… would the trustee contemplate pinch-hitting for a third time?
“I’m always available if needed,” Cutler said cheerfully.
“I know all the skeletons in the closet. I don’t necessarily know all the passwords. But I do consider myself a Macculloch!”
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