Susan Henshaw Jones Steps Down as Director of the Museum of the City of New York, December

Susan Henshaw Jones, 67, has decided to step down in December from her position as Director of the Museum of the City of New York.

"This place is in good shape for the next gal or guy," she said in an interview at the museum.

The museum was founded in 1923 to "consider all things New York," and it's has evolved from featuring a complete room of Duncan Phyfe furniture and a man's suit worn at George Washington's inaugural ball to a collection with about 750,000 objects, including prints, photographs, decorative arts, costumes, paintings, sculpture and theatrical memorabilia. Though there was talk in the early 1990s of merging with the New-York Historical Society, the two institutions decided the proposal was too costly.

Jones said the museum teaches about the past to inform the present with programming like its coming show on affordable housing. "New Yorkers have a way of thinking nothing else needs to be learned," she said. "Yet we really have to think about issues of sustainability and infrastructure."

The museum plans to open a technologically sophisticated, long-term exhibition on the city's history, "New York at Its Core," which will occupy the museum's entire first floor and cost $14 million, most of which has been raised in October 2016.

Though the City Museum is at the northern end of the so-called Museum Mile, Jones said it is operating in something of its own cultural district with a revitalized El Museo del Barrio at 104th Street and the ambitious Africa Center under construction at 110th Street.

Shows like "Robert Moses and the Modern City: Remaking the Metropolis" in 2006 and "Saving Place: 50 Years of New York City Landmarks, which opens on Monday, have brought the museum international attention and "made the institution relevant again to New Yorkers,"James Dinan, the museum's chairman, said.

"We are no longer an institution where people come to see dollhouses or period rooms that were last renovated in the 1950s," he added. "We've moved beyond the existentialist phase into becoming a world-class city history museum."

Jones said mounting these shows has been the most enjoyable part of the job. "It's like taking a course," she said, "learning about something new, delving into history."

Jones began her career in New York City in the early 1970s in the Lindsay administration; she was one of three founders of Creative Time, a nonprofit organization devoted to public art. She was president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy from 1988 to 1994 and president and director of the National Building Museum in Washington from 1994 to 2002.

Jones says she's looking forward to relaxing in places like Key West and Montana with her husband, Richard K. Eaton. However, her involvement in the museum will be a tough habit to break.

"I love the Museum of the City of New York," she said. "I believe firmly in the things we celebrate here as part of our mission - diversity and opportunity and perpetual transformation."

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Photo Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York