Bob Archibald resigns from History Museum

Last week Bob Archibald, the veteran president of the Missouri History Museum known for his idealistic and aggressive crusading spirit in confronting issues of race, announced that he is resigning from his position, effective December 31.

Archibald, 64, told The American his decision was due both to political pressure and personal concerns.

“Very serious threats were made to eliminate tax support for the institution, and I think if I get out of the way and fall on the sword, that makes it more possible to undo that or have other kinds of conversations about it that are not about me,” Archibald told The American.

The museum receives approximately $10 million annually from the tax-supported Zoo-Museum District.

The current “conversations” about Archibald have been held relentlessly in the pages of the Post-Dispatch and at Zoo-Museum District meetings.

The Post has based months of news and opinion coverage on Archibald’s approval of an over-valued price for a parcel of land on Delmar Boulevard that was sold to the museum by former Mayor Freeman Bosley Jr. and Bosley’s business partner. One of Mayor Francis G. Slay’s appointees to the museum district, Gloria Wessels, has been equally relentless in leading opposition to Archibald at public meetings.

The land deal with Bosley and his partner in 2006 was intended for a new cultural center north of Delmar – the city’s notorious barrier between white and black St. Louis – that fell through with the economic downturn in 2007.

Public attacks on Archibald by the Post and Wessels soon spread from his approval of the land deal to his compensation and use of vacation time. Months of relentless pressure in the press and at public meetings have taken their toll on Archibald.

“It’s been a really, really uncomfortable period of time,” Archibald said. “I’ve been here 25 years and suddenly had my reputation dragged through the mud. It’s taken a toll, emotionally and physically, on my wife and me. It’s time to bring an end to it.”

Archibald first came to St. Louis to lead the museum in 1988. He introduced decades of ambitious, diverse programming, often directly addressing issues of race seldom confronted by public institutions in St. Louis (see “Facing up to race,” page A????).

“I was telling my wife, I don’t think I ever went to the History Museum in the old days,” Ron Jackson, who served with Archibald on the St. Louis Public Schools board, told the Post. “It wasn’t that welcoming to African Americans before Bob got there.”

“It was a plan to build a $12 million community asset in a place where big money doesn’t usually go, and where decline and decay are common if not expected. The new museum location was to be a place that everyday middle-class people would be able to see as theirs. The recession killed the project, but the allegations swirling around could be even more destructive to the Missouri History Museum, which is nationally recognized as a cultural institution that serves not just tourists and big donors, but everyone.”

The Post’s own report on Archibald’s resignation states that “museum leaders must repair an image so damaged that they expect millions of dollars less in donations next year.”

Archibald said his family plans to sell their house in St. Louis and move to the  upper peninsula of Michigan. Archibald is from Ishpeming, Michigan, on the upper peninsula. He plans to research and publish some manuscripts by author John Voelker (pen name: Robert Traver), who also was from Ishpeming.

“I want to create an intergenerational dialogue with this author that is about change, comparing his perspective from 50 years ago with mine,” Archibald said.

Archibald also is contemplating a work of fiction and a critical book about “the function of history and history museums in the 21^st century.”