According to Radio Canada, Henry King, the former curator of the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, has been selected as the new CEO of the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec.
National Museum has Since the resignation of CEO Mark O’Neill in April, there has been no official leader, Two months before his planned retirement date.
After O’Neill was complained about his temperament and management style, he has been the subject of workplace harassment investigations.
The investigation was concluded in January and has been submitted to Steven Guilbeault, the Minister of Heritage. It has not yet been made public.
The federal government submitted Kim as a candidate to the Quebec Museum Board of Directors for approval.
According to a source from Radio Canada, the board of directors of the museum had serious disagreements over his candidacy and only passed by a small majority.
Kim is not considered to be a bilingual, and his resume lacks expertise in Aboriginal culture or Canadian history. In the official job invitation for this position, the government stated that it would consider “the applicant’s bilingual ability and diversity.”
For eight years, King has been running the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto and assisting in overseeing its opening.
Opened in 2014, the museum is a private institution dedicated to showcasing Islamic civilization and its contributions to art, thought, and science over the centuries. The museum houses more than 1,000 objects from the Iberian Peninsula to China.
In a 2015 YouTube video, Kim said that Canada was chosen as the location of the Aga Khan Museum because it is a symbol of “diversity, multiculturalism, and all the basic principles of pluralism.”
“Canada embodies these principles, not just buzzwords,” he said.
The Aga Khan Museum is much smaller than the Canadian History Museum, which has a permanent collection of more than 3 million artifacts, documents, art and specimens.
Kim studied archeology at Harvard University and Oxford University, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Before leading the Aga Khan Museum, he taught at Oxford and led a project to modernize the University’s Ashmolean Museum.
Kim’s appointment will now be submitted to the Cabinet for final approval.
