Frances Levine has been appointed the Interim Executive Director for the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, the Museum announced today. Levine will lead the Museum as it searches for a permanent Executive Director, to be selected in the coming months.  

“Although I retired a few short months ago, I could not pass up an opportunity to lead this incredible team and project,” said Levine. “I was struck by the impact of the building, the excellence of the Museum exhibits, and the promise of the work we can do together in the St. Louis region and beyond.”  
 Frances Levine was the President and CEO of the Missouri Historical Society and Missouri History Museum from spring 2014 until summer 2022 when she retired. Levine led the successful reaccreditation of the Missouri Historical Society by the American Alliance of Museums in 2019, and the successful integration of the Soldiers Memorial Military Museum into the institutional organization of the MHS. Under her leadership, MHS received the first ever award for Diversity Equity and Inclusion awarded by the American Alliance of Museum in 2017. In 2019, she was named one of the most influential women in business by the St. Louis Business Journal and received a National Urban League Salute to Women Award in 2018. In 2021, she received the Norman A. Stack Award for Community Relations from the Jewish Community Relations Council in St. Louis.  
 “It is a joy to have Levine join our team and lead the Museum as it takes an exciting step into the future,” said Helen Turner, director of education at the museum. “Her experience, her leadership, and perhaps most importantly, her heart, will empower the Museum to become the regional powerhouse we know it will be.”   

A native of Connecticut, Levine received her B.A. in anthropology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from Southern Methodist University, Dallas. She was the Director of the Palace of the Governors, New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe from 2002 to 2014, and held academic positions at Santa Fe Community College.  

In 2009, she attended the prestigious Getty Museum Leadership Institute. She is a member of the American Alliance of Museums, the American Society for Ethnohistory, and the Santa Fe Trail Association.  She has served as an evaluator for the American Alliance of Museums Accreditation review process for museums in the U.S. and Mexico.   

Levine is the author, co-editor or contributor to several award-winning books including “Doña Teresa Confronts the Spanish Inquisition: A Seventeenth Century New Mexican Drama” (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2016) which has won a Southwest Book Award by the Border Regional Library Association.  She has just completed a manuscript for the University of Kansas Press entitled “Crossings: Women on the Santa Fe Trail,” which will be published in 2023.