Museum veteran hired as Executive Director of Shelbyville's Grover Center

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Sarah Richardt sees big possibilities as the new Executive Director of the Grover Center in Shelbyville.

A museum veteran from both the Chicago area and Columbus, Ohio, Richardt was hired to replace Alex Krach, who recently accepted a museum position in northern New York.

“My plan in life was to work in a zoo,” said Richardt from her new office at the Grover Center museum, 52 W. Broadway. “I did that for seven years. I was tired of wet feet, and you have to feed the animals every day so I was working Christmas. I didn’t think I wanted to do that for the rest of my life.”

Zoos and museums are structurally similar, according to Richardt, so that transition came seamlessly.

“They all have collections. They have to manage the collections,” she explained. “You have to manage your visitors. You have to manage your board of directors and your volunteers. They are set up the exact same way.

“A lot of zoos and museums, the professional organizations collaborate because they are the same. Again, they just have a different type of collection.”

Richardt took a position with the Lombard Historical Society in the Chicago suburb of Lombard, Illinois. One of the features of the museum was an Underground Railroad site.

Richardt followed her husband to Columbus and took a position with the Kelton House Museum and Garden – a 10,000 square foot mansion, also with ties to the Underground Railroad. Just as she settled in, her husband was transferred to Indianapolis. Her love of the Columbus museum kept her in the area for three more years. She commuted back and forth to Indianapolis to see her husband.

“In June, I said we haven’t lived together for three years and we’ve been married for 30 years,” she said. “It was probably time to live with my husband again. So I moved to Indy and found this job.”

For more on Alex Krach leaving the Grover Center, click on the link: https://shelbycountypost.com/local-news/702567/krach-leaving-grover-center-for-museum-in-upstate-new-york

The sheer size of the Grover Center is different than her previous two museum positions. She is excited about the opportunity to create bigger exhibits.

“There are some stories that I think we can really tap into that will be interesting throughout Shelby County … and how the stories here in Shelbyville and Shelby County and the Grover, how they are national stories,” said Richardt. “But everything starts local. There are things we can expand upon and teach, because we are first and foremost education. That’s what we do.

“This place is so hyper-focused on local, and that’s what is different from what I’ve been at and what I’ve seen. It is so incredibly, ‘This is Shelby County.” That is a lot different from where I’ve been personally.”

Richardt is originally from Fort Wayne and went to Purdue to study Wildlife Science which led to her first zoo job. She met her husband, had two daughters and realized zoo life was not her interest anymore.

“I kind of fell into a museum and started working with this absolutely fabulous woman,” said Richardt. “She already had her master’s degree and studied African-American history and the Underground Railroad together. I did that for a long time. I ended up being the director there.”

The desire to get away from Chicago shifted the family’s focus.

“Three of us moved to Columbus, Ohio,” said Richardt, whose youngest daughter was still in the Marines, serving in Japan.

With her husband already set up in Columbus, Richardt wrapped up her work in Lombard and moved to Ohio in April of 2020.

“I got there the middle of April and a week later he got transferred to Indianapolis,” she said. “The plan was I was going to take this little museum job and he was going to take this little sales job in a tree company. It was a big company but he was going to take a small job and we were going to kind of coast for the next 15 years and retire. We had a crazy life in Chicago.”

Now, the Richardts’ two daughters own the house in Columbus and Sarah has a new museum to nurture in Shelbyville.

“I am a museum person,” she said. “A lot of people come this way because they are not-for-profit people or they live in a town and want to be a part of something. I am a museum person. I am a public historian.”

On the job for about a month, Richardt is already dreaming up new exhibits while studying Shelbyville’s and Shelby County’s history.

“Do I know Shelbyville? Absolutely not,” she said. “I am relying on volunteers and the board and the community to help me. ... I have the opportunity to work with some really great people that are already here. I am excited about that.”

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