New Director of Indian Museum Ready to Face Challenges

Kevin Gover, the new director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, says he is not concerned about the criticism the organization received for its former director’s spending and says he hopes the museum will become a center of scholarship, reports The New York Times.

Mr. Gover, a former law professor at Arizona State University and a member of the Pawnee tribe, takes the reins from W. Richard West Jr., who retired last month amid criticism over $250,000 he spent on travel and hotels and $48,500 for his museum portrait. Mr. Gover says he thinks the accusations of impropriety were unfair.

“We took a little hit on our image,” he said. “I worry about that in connection with the tribes. But in a very few months I think very few people will remember this.”

Mr. Gover, who worked for three years as assistant secretary for Indian affairs at the federal Interior Department, overseeing the Bureau of Indian Affairs, says he hopes American Indian tribes will “adopt” the museum financially. He also plans to visit Indians around the country to determine what they would like to see at the museum.

“It’s time for this museum to renew and strengthen its relationship with its primary constituents, which are the Indian tribes in this country,” he told the Times.

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