Meg Hibbert Contributing writer
Fran Ferguson has come home. The new executive director of the Salem Museum grew up in Salem but hadn’t worked here for a while. Frances McClung Ferguson is rapidly figuring out how the museum and the Salem Historical Society operate after starting the job in January.
Although she hasn’t been working in Salem until now, museums are her strong suit. For the last seven years she had been development director of the Virginia Museum of Transportation, and before that, helped to lead other area nonprofits.
She admits she has “hit the ground running” by necessity. Last Saturday, Ferguson, an active board and volunteers presided graciously over the museum’s newest exhibit about Oldcastle, another historic home, and Preston Place, the historical society’s latest house acquisition on West Main Street.
On Feb. 11, 141+ of historical society members and other guests visited, curious to learn more about Salem’s oldest home before it is scheduled to reopen to the public in March as the new home of the White Oak Tea Tavern.
It was first new exhibit at the Salem Museum since Ferguson came, but she is quick to point out that Alex Burke, the new assistant director, took the lead in developing it. The 2016 Roanoke College graduate was hired in October after he volunteered as an intern.
That had been more than a year since former director John Long left to become education director of the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford. In between, the museum kept going through the efforts of a cadre of volunteers such as President Dr. Peggy A. Shifflett, who volunteered as interim curator between Long and Ferguson’s directorships. Day-to-day activities during that period were done by Assistant Director Anna Cory, who moved to Durham, N.C., in October to become a research librarian at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Ferguson is enthusiastic about being the Salem Museum and Historical Society’s Executive Director and coming back to work in the city where she and her husband, Norman, live. She has been reaching out to museum supporters and plans to start conversations between the public and the museum in the spring to get people’s ideas of what they want the museum to be. She was quoted as saying “This is Salem’s place. I want to hear what people value, what they want to see, what they will come out for.”
Although the Salem Museum is a non-profit run by a board of directors, it receives some city funds. In December, the museum board asked Salem City Council for a one-time contribution of $15,000 to help meet the director’s $52,000 salary. Other funds come from contributions from 14 members of the museum’s Platinum Council, each of whom pledged $1,000 per year for five years in support of the executive director’s salary.
The Salem Museum is located in the historic Williams-Brown House on East Main Street, in Longwood Park and across from East Hill Cemetery. It is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. There is no admission charge.
