Gamble House Conservancy Appoints Alexandra Rasic to be Next Executive Director

The Gamble House Conservancy Board of Trustees on Thursday announced that Alexandra Rasic has been appointed the next Executive Director of The Gamble House Conservancy, the non-profit organization that administers The Gamble House.

Rasic will succeed longtime Executive Director Edward (Ted) Bosley, who will be retiring next month. She will begin her duties on October 11, 2021.

Rasic comes to The Gamble House with more than 25 years of experience in roles of increasing responsibility at the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum in the City of Industry. Most recently she served as Programs and Audience Engagement Director (since 2019) and Director of Public Programs (2009-2019).

Highly regarded in the field of historic house museums, Rasic has served since 2013 as workshop faculty for the American Association for State and Local History (AAS LH) and since 2018 as an AASLH Council Member at the national level. At the Homestead Museum, she expanded the museum’s programming and community engagement efforts, and most recently oversaw a successful and well-regarded institutional rebranding.

Her demonstrated skills in developing public programs and keen focus on emerging trends in the historic house world are an ideal fit for The Gamble House, the nonprofit said in a statement Thursday.

Her first visit to The Gamble House, as a high school student, inspired a History Day presentation focusing on reactions to the Industrial Revolution as seen through architecture, a presentation that advanced her to the state level of competition. That first visit incited a life-long love for The Gamble House, further solidified by driving past it routinely while living in the neighborhood and while her children attended preschool next door, the statement said.

“Few museum experiences are as intimate as visiting a historic house museum, let alone one that stands alone as a complete work of art like The Gamble House,”Rasic is quoted as saying. “While it’s not a home that most people could aspire to own in their lifetime, the opportunity to experience a visit, and be inspired by the craftsmanship, passion, and ideas that went into creating it — and still go into caring for it today — are relatable and inspiring to a wide audience.”

Rasic’s recent scholarship and writing include “Reaching New Heights with Volunteers in Historic House Museums” in the edited publication Reimagining Historic House Museums: New Approaches and Proven Solutions (Turino and van Balgooy, 2019). She is a regular presenter for AASLH, and most recently presented a paper at the California Association of Museums (CAM) annual conference in 2020.

Retiring director Ted Bosley commented “I’ve been tremendously privileged to have had a long and fulfilling career at The Gamble House and I am thrilled that Alex Rasic emerged as the top candidate to succeed me. She has her finger firmly on the pulse of house museum audiences, and I know she will do a terrific job leading The Gamble House into the future.”

Bosley has agreed to serve on The Gamble House Conservancy Board of Trustees as Executive Director Emeritus following his retirement.

The Gamble House was designed by architects Charles and Henry Greene in 1908 for David and Mary Gamble, heirs to the success of the Procter & Gamble Company. Greene & Greene are internationally recognized as among the greatest architects of the Arts & Crafts movement. The Gamble House opened to the public in 1966 following the gift of the house and its contents from Gamble-family heirs to the City of Pasadena in a joint agreement with the University of Southern California (USC) School of Architecture. In 2020, USC transferred its administrative responsibility to the newly formed Gamble House Conservancy.

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