Three National Trust Historic Sites now have new leaders at the helm.

Miguel Rodriguez was recently appointed as Chesterwood’s executive director after the retirement of his predecessor, Donna Hassler, who led the site for 14 years. Meredith Sorin Horsford was named the new executive director of The Pocantico Center, which includes National Trust Historic Site Kykuit, following the retirement of Judy Clark, who was with Pocantico for nearly 40 years. And at Cooper-Molera Adobe, Karyn Lee-Garcia has taken the reins as the site’s first executive director.

These places each tell a distinct story: Chesterwood in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, was once the summer home and studio of American sculptor Daniel Chester French; Kykuit is a 40-room estate originally built for the Rockefeller family in New York’s Hudson Valley; and Cooper-Molera’s two adobe homes, historic corner store, and barn sit in the heart of downtown Monterey, California.

Despite these differences, the new leaders have a similar vision for how to usher their sites into the future. They're each working to make these historic places, and preservation as a field, more accessible to their visitors. We sat down with Rodriguez, Horsford, and Lee-Garcia to learn more about their plans.

What did your career look like prior to joining the National Trust, and what drew you to join your respective sites?

Miguel Rodriguez: My background has been mostly the performing arts and nonprofits. I started as an opera singer. I [later] had the opportunity to join an opera company as the chief development officer.

In 2018, I launched a representation agency for opera singers, conductors, and stage directors. I did that through the pandemic, and then I moved to the Berkshires. After spending time here in the Berkshires, I got hungry to be part of that landscape. The opportunity at Chesterwood came up, and I took a leap of faith.

Meredith S. Horsford: I’ve spent all of my career working in museums and historic preservation. I started at an organization called the Historic House Trust of New York City, really managing the preservation side of things.

You wear a lot of hats in historic house museums. It’s a little bit of everything. [Eventually] I went back to the Historic House Trust to become the executive director. Then in late 2024 I came to The Pocantico Center.

Karyn Lee-Garcia: Prior to starting with Cooper-Molera Adobe, I worked for seven years with the Arts Council for Monterey County as their chief programs officer, expanding education and public art opportunities for local artists and youth along with providing grants and professional development to under-resourced across Monterey County.

I’ve been living in Monterey since 2015. This site is such a focal point of downtown Monterey, and I was always curious of what was happening behind the adobe walls. That was my initial entryway.

What aspects of your site are you most excited about adapting and growing?

Rodriguez: Chesterwood has done an amazing job at preserving this site: the residence, the studio, the visitors center, the outdoor sculpture exhibition. Also, [there’s] the fact that it has one of the largest collections of the entire National Trust. To me, the next step is, how do we activate that collection so that more people get to see it?

I found out that Daniel Chester French used to hold an ice cream social for children once every summer, so I am partnering with a local creamery. We’re going to have one day every month from June through October where we have lawn games and activities and ice cream.

My goal is also to create a young people’s sculpture camp here at Chesterwood every summer. We’re in conversations and partnering with the Berkshire Art Center, and [planning to] bring an artist here to work for two-week periods with children.

Lee-Garcia: I’m not one to come in and make massive changes right away. As a shared-use model and in partnership with several on-site businesses, Cooper-Molera is a unique site from the National Trust’s other historic sites. I needed to understand how our partners work together, areas of improvement, and at the museum, I wanted to better understand our collection, which is off-site across California.

Cooper-Molera's museum is a blank slate. I’ve seen and learned that there needed to be a really sound business structure here, and that was something that had not been established.

It took me from January until now—sitting in the museum, seeing how people are coming in and out—to really understand what flow would make most sense in this space. Seeing that, I’m going to completely redo our check-in area and turn that into visitor check-in and also a gift shop.

[I also plan] to establish a more robust school field trip program and quarterly art exhibitions in our Skylight Room.

National Trust CEO Carol Quillen often emphasizes the “power of place.” How do you witness this at each of your historic sites?

Rodriguez: For me, preservation creates community. It creates a community of artists who get inspired here. It inspires community by bringing people from the region into Chesterwood, and also it inspires a community of art lovers and historic site lovers.

I think early exposure to this is what creates the benefactors of the future, the collectors of the future, the artists of the future, the historians of the future, the preservationists of the future. That’s what we’re creating here.

Horsford: [The Rockefellers] built this amazing, now-historic house and sort of created their own little campus of what the family wanted and needed. They had the forethought to really think about how this place could be not just preserved, but useful and utilized by the community.