Hello, She Must Be Going

Eight months after hiring a new executive director, the East Hampton Historical Society is beginning the search for her replacement. 

The society announced late last month that Jill Malusky, who had been in the position since March, had “resigned due to family reasons that have caused her to relocate out of state.” 

Ms. Malusky, who is originally from Ohio, had previously lived in Kentucky, where she was director of visitor engagement at the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill. “I adored her,” said Hollis Forbes, president of the society’s board of trustees. “I just think she’s fabulous.” 

Ms. Malusky replaced Richard Barons, the society’s director since 2006. He has stayed on temporarily as curator but was to retire at the end of this year. “I thought she was the perfect next step after Richard,” Ms. Forbes said last week.

The historical society has already placed ads in three museum journals and the local papers, but “going into the sleepy winter months,” Ms. Forbes was confident that the existing staff and a team of very active board members — she named Barbara Borsack, Frank Newbold, and Maureen Bluedorn among them — would keep things running smoothly. 

“We have two really competent people in the office,” she said, and Mr. Barons “is around as long as he wants to be around.” In addition, the society has “a great new hire for programming,” Ms. Forbes said, although she was not ready to announce who would take this newly created position. 

As for the post of executive director, “I foresee by March 30 we would have somebody in place,” she said. “It’s just a matter of finding the right person again, and we will.” 

In the meantime, the society is preparing for its biggest event of the off-season, its 2017 House and Garden Tour on Nov. 25, with a preview party on Friday, Nov. 24, at the Maidstone Club.