RALEIGH - Ken Howard gets restless when he strides through the galleries at the N.C. Museum of History.

History shouldn't be musty, he thinks. It should feel fresh.

Of course, a history museum has to preserve the past and educate the populace. But you have to get people's attention first.

History should be -- he'll go ahead and say it -- entertaining.

"We're in the entertainment business," said Howard, who officially becomes the museum's director today. "There are so many other things people can choose from."

Howard, 53, quietly stepped into the job as interim director in March, after previous director Elizabeth Buford's forced retirement took effect. He was hand-picked by Cultural Resources Secretary Lisbeth "Libba" Evans, whose department oversees the museum.

Evans knew Howard from his service with the board of the N.C. Museum of History Associates, a nonprofit fundraising board. Howard had time on his hands, having recently cashed out of a couple of tech start-ups as a wealthy man. He agreed to take the job for at least a year.

But Howard had no interest in a ceremonial, placeholder job. He has big plans for his short stay: bringing in new exhibitions more often, making them interactive, rotating artifacts from the museum's collection, raising millions of dollars from private donors and persuading state government leaders to chip in their share of financial support.

In the four months since he started, he has accelerated the pace of major exhibitions that were in the works and expanded on them. He has been tearing down walls -- literally and figuratively -- to make way for ambitious plans, including dismantling the health-and-healing exhibition that had been there for 10 years.

After a career in business, Howard admits to frustration at the pace of government bureaucracy. But by the time he leaves, he hopes to have built the museum's reputation to the point that it will attract new and repeat visitors, financial support and highly qualified candidates to replace him.

Through choppy waters

That's a big agenda for a museum that has gone through turbulent times in recent years, including a national search for a director that stretched from 1999 to 2001. One candidate accepted the job, then bailed out. Rather than continue the search, Evans appointed Buford, her chief deputy, to run the museum.

Buford, a longtime Cultural Resources employee, was popular with the museum staff. But in December, she announced her retirement under an agreement that prohibits her from talking about why she left.

In January, Evans tapped Howard, without any public announcement, to serve as interim director while another nationwide search was launched. Dissatisfied with the applicants, department administrators asked Howard to stay a little longer. Applicants might have been dissuaded by the fact that the position is exempt from protections of the state personnel act, and a new administration will be doing the hiring and firing in 2009.

He committed to at least a year, but he had one request: that he not be called the interim director. The title implies an uncertainty that can discourage potential donors.

The state is getting Howard practically for free: He wanted to be able to walk away from the job if things got really frustrating, and so his $18,000 salary is just enough to cover health benefits.

One of Howard's first tasks was to seek the advice of his predecessors, including Buford and also James C. McNutt, who left in 1999 to take over a museum in Texas. Last year, McNutt became president and CEO of a wildlife museum in Wyoming, which is where Howard found him.

"He said history is just a tougher sell sometimes," Howard said. "We've got to turn that around and get people interested in history."

'Lost Colony' a key

Born in Dunn and raised in Wilmington, Howard graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and later earned a law degree at Wake Forest University. He worked briefly in corporate law before getting involved in a company that computerized records for doctors' offices.

The short version of his story is he made a lot of money and decided to give something back to his home state. He targeted an institution that he always complained could be better than it was.

First, he tore down the decade-old health exhibition. Then he made plans to create a decorative arts gallery, using the museum's large collection of textiles, pottery, silver and and other objects, which will open in August.

Next year, the gallery will expand to feature the early 19th-century works of Thomas Day, an African-American cabinet-maker from Caswell County. In May, Howard breathed new life into a dormant military history gallery, which this fall will expand and coordinate a program with UNC-TV on the new Ken Burns series about World War II.

He has embraced and expanded one of Buford's final projects. In October, the museum will open its first blockbuster exhibition, "Mysteries of the Lost Colony," which will be built around a collection of watercolors loaned from The British Museum.

"Lost Colony" will mark the first time the museum has charged admission, and Howard is counting on a lot of interest from the general public. Besides the paintings by colony governor John White, the exhibition will incorporate aspects of "The Lost Colony" outdoor drama, include an Algonquin Indian village and offer what Howard calls a "C.S.I."-type exhibit, in which visitors sift through clues and try to determine what could have happened to the settlers who disappeared.

Howard said $1 million will have to be raised to cover the loan from The British Museum. That's in addition to several hundred thousand dollars being raised for the decorative arts gallery.

The final challenge is still ahead. Next year, Howard hopes to push through the signature exhibition that has been planned since the museum moved into its current building in 1994: a chronology exhibition that would trace the state's own history for the first time. At more than 19,000 square feet, it would be the museum's largest exhibition ever, taking up most of the first floor.

If the money comes through, the first phase, covering pre-history to 1850, would open a year from now, and the second phase, 1850 to the present, in December 2008. Howard said $6 million in state money is proposed, and the rest would have to come from donors.

Howard noted that a comparable amount of private money was raised to build the museum building on Bicentennial Plaza in 1994. He said that shows there is interest, but he lamented that major fundraising has been dormant since then. The "Lost Colony" show will be the first substantial push for funds.

"If we can make this a success and show we can compete and do the big exhibition, it will be easier to get support," Thomas said.