Kansas City’s American Jazz Museum has a new leader

After a nationwide search for a new director of the American Jazz Museum, the museum’s board of directors found someone they considered the perfect pick working less than 2 miles away.

Cheptoo Kositany-Buckner, deputy director of strategic services at the Kansas City Public Library, will become executive director of the city-owned museum in March after 25 years at the library.

She replaces Greg Carroll, who resigned without explanation last July after eight years on the job. Ralph Reid, a former Sprint executive, was appointed interim director the following month.

A native of Kenya, Kositany-Buckner graduated with a degree in computer information systems from the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg and received a certificate from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, Executive Education and International Programs.

During her career at the library, she rose from a job in the information technology department and became one of three deputy directors reporting to library executive director Crosby Kemper III.

Kemper said that he will be sorry to lose her talent but that Kositany-Buckner was an excellent pick to run the jazz museum, which has struggled at times to attract a wider audience.

“She will put it and Kansas City on the national and international map, as she has with our Internet endeavors and so much else,” Kemper said in a statement.

In her current job, Kositany-Buckner oversaw the design and renovation of the library’s L.H. Bluford and Plaza branches, as well as led the library’s effort to provide lower-income people with more computer and Internet access.

Critics have complained that some of the exhibits in the nearly 20-year-old museum are tired and not nearly as interactive as those in newer facilities.

“The exhibits could use a lot of updating,” Kositany-Buckner said, “and plans are already beginning on that.”

She said visitors will notice changes soon after she takes the job, such as more temporary exhibits to give visitors more reasons to make return trips. Bigger changes could also be ahead. The City Council is considering a proposal that would pump $18 million in public funds into the jazz district, including $1.3 million for the jazz museum.

Kositany-Buckner said she looks forward to working with the city, the jazz community and other institutions in the jazz district, with whom the museum could better collaborate. They include the Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey, the Black Archives of Mid-America, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and the Mutual Musicians Foundation.

Under Carroll, relations were strained at times between the jazz museum and some of those groups. Kositany-Buckner promises to help bring them together for the betterment of an entertainment district that has fallen short of expectations since the city began making major investments into its renovation in the 1990s.

This story was originally published January 21, 2016 at 2:21 PM with the headline "Kansas City’s American Jazz Museum has a new leader."