Photograph by Dai Sugano

Laura Bajuk spends several days each week in Los Gatos serving as executive director of the town's museums.

LGMA director shares love of history

By Shari Kaplan

The world can be a small place, and connections make it even smaller--something the Los Gatos Museum Association's new executive director, Laura Bajuk, knows very well.

Although a fourth-generation Alameda native, Bajuk has several links with Los Gatos as well as a long-standing love of history, so it was easy for her to settle into her new position, for which she spends several days each week ensconced in the upstairs offices of the Forbes Mill Regional History Museum.

After finishing grad school in museum studies at San Francisco State University, Bajuk curated a women's history exhibit at the Cupertino Historical Museum and met Ethel Worn, the LGMA's executive director from 1991 to 1994. Much earlier, Bajuk discovered how much she liked Los Gatos while working at the Wooden Horse Toy Store in Carmel--she sometimes came to the Los Gatos store for training.

"I've been trying to listen and observe. I have a lot of ideas for things, but I don't want to bring up too much at once," Bajuk says of the LGMA directorship she took in June. "This is an active group [of volunteers]; it's not lethargic by any means. If it was, it probably wouldn't have been a good match for me."

"I've always said I wanted to be the executive director of a small history museum, and now I am," she adds. Her prior related experience is extensive, including positions as fundraising, marketing and membership coordinator for San Francisco's Treasure Island Naval Museum and numerous assistant, intern and volunteer positions with many Bay Area museums and historical and cultural organizations.

After striking her match with the LGMA, Bajuk is preparing to implement several improvements, particularly at Forbes Mill, where she plans to renovate the storage methods and facilities for the museum's permanent collections and ever-growing archives. For example, she wants to improve the way old textiles, photographs, magazines and newspapers are preserved, to make sure they'll be around for more generations. She also wants to introduce a registrar's position--like the "bigger" museums have.

"We've got great volunteers who I really trust with taking care of everything. We just need to organize it better," she says.

Bajuk also works several days a week as the development and marketing manager for San Leandro's Classical Philharmonic Orchestra. The commute is nothing for Bajuk, who grew up the oldest of three children of a Navy father whose assignments spelled frequent relocations for the family. This constant moving gave Bajuk a real taste for change.

"I've found that if I don't move or make a major change in my life every two years, I find myself doing things like rearranging all my furniture," she reveals, laughing.

Being a military brat had another plus for Bajuk during her impressionable years: it developed her interest in history. During each cross-country move--and occasional stints on naval bases on foreign soil--all family members took part in choosing educational places to visit along the road. Bajuk leaned toward history museums and historic sites; her brother favored natural science museums and nature and her mother enjoyed historic homes.

Appropriately for Bajuk, Los Gatos has some of each.

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