Mashantucket - Jason Mancini's plate is heaped high.

Over the next 10 weeks, he's got to map out the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center's future, lay the groundwork for the appointment of the museum's first board of directors and restaff the place.

He has alliances to forge, a marketing plan to devise, a menu to tweak.

On or about May 1, Mancini will preside over the museum's first re-opening, an event made necessary by its first-ever closing at the end of November. The Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, which owns and operates the museum, announced the shutdown in mid-October, saying the museum would close to the public during its "slow season."

Restoring the attraction's luster - and its year-round calendar - might seem to be a monumental challenge, or a series of them. But Mancini, 42, named the museum's interim director Jan. 6 and permanent director 10 days later, prefers to see challenges as opportunities.

"The goal is to be self-sustaining," he said during a recent interview. "I think we can do a much better job attracting audiences. We have to make ourselves more accessible, to be part of the region's appeal. Attractions like Mystic Seaport, Mystic Aquarium and us have to think collectively."

Boosting attendance, a tall order for museums these days regardless of the prevailing economic winds, is a piece of the puzzle facing Mancini, whose background is steeped in academia. An anthropologist who lectures at the University of Connecticut, where he earned his doctorate, and Connecticut College, he recently began teaching a history course at Brown.

Mancini acknowledged that museum directors have had to shift their focus from exhibits to the business side of things.

"I have some room to grow there," he said.

His uncle, Kevin McBride, the museum's research director, was involved in planning the museum in the early 1990s, when the initial success of the Mashantuckets' Foxwoods Resort Casino made the project possible.

"It's tough to find a professional museum director to step into a situation like this," McBride said. "When they appointed (Mancini) interim director, my recommendation was that they don't go out and search right now for a permanent director. Within a short time, it was clear he was suited."

In announcing Mancini's permanent appointment, Antonio Beltran, the tribe's chief of staff, wrote: "I have had the benefit of working with Mr. Mancini over the course of the past couple of years and have been very pleased with the progress he has made in just the past few weeks alone, from reorganizing the staff and programs, to generating new and exciting ideas."

The third director in the museum's 17-year history, Mancini is the first who is not a member of the tribe. Theresa Bell, sister of former tribal Chairman Richard "Skip" Hayward, led the museum as executive director from its opening in 1998 until her resignation in 2006. Kimberly Hatcher-White succeeded Bell and remained in the job until early 2013. The permanent position had been vacant until Mancini's appointment.

Hatcher-White declined to comment for this story. Neither Bell nor Hayward responded to attempts to reach them.

A shared mission

Mancini could hardly be more familiar with the museum and its surroundings.

A St. Bernard High School graduate who grew up in Ledyard and resides in North Stonington, he's worked at the museum since its inception, advancing from collections manager to staff archaeologist to senior researcher.

His ties to the tribe go back even further.

At 14, he started working with McBride, an associate professor of anthropology at UConn. Mancini said their laboratory, the Mashantucket reservation, is the oldest, continuously occupied Indian reservation in the country, dating to 1666. From an archaeological perspective, he said it's "one of the best-studied landscapes in the United States."

Foxwoods was built on the first site Mancini investigated.

As a researcher, Mancini also delved into the written history of the Mashantuckets. He said he found that over a period of some 375 years, perceptions of the tribe were "constructed" by those seeking to send a particular message. Much of his scholarship has been an attempt to sort out the record, a mission the museum shares.

"Still, there's a broad perception that the tribe came out of nowhere," Mancini said.

Asked if he finds that frustrating, he said, "No, I see it as an opportunity. There are still a lot of people that I want to reach … We don't go out and pontificate. We want to provide an alternative perspective. We're not interested in throwing things in people's faces."

He cited the museum's Pequot War exhibit, which includes the perspectives of the Dutch and English as well as that of the Mashantuckets.

'A board might help'

The museum, long dependent on the tribe for funding and the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Council for direction and oversight, would appear to be on the verge of a new era, one that some say is long overdue.

In announcing the museum's seasonal shutdown, the tribe said the council and museum staff would begin recruiting a board of directors "to oversee governance of the organization, fundraising and development."

The museum's lack of a board has always been an issue, according to McBride, the research director.

"My feelings are mixed," he said. "We haven't always been able to separate the museum from the outside perspective that it's part of the casino. I'm very proud to be associated with a tribal museum, but the reality is that the tribal council is a phenomenally busy entity, and it hasn't always been able to give time to the museum. … With us struggling financially, a board might help."

Mancini believes a board is the way to go.

"A board of directors is part of every healthy nonprofit organization," he said, indicating he will solicit candidates from the academic, business and tribal communities, both locally and regionally. He'll look there for funding, too.

"We want to develop access to other sources, to form alliances and relationships with colleges and universities, state departments of education," he said. "My blue sky is to ensure that every student in fourth through ninth grades has access to the museum."

Of more immediate concern is the museum's staffing level, which was cut from fewer than 60 positions to the current 11 in connection with the seasonal closing. Some of those let go - a conservator, a curator, an archivist, a librarian, an education director, an exhibits manager - will be especially hard to replace, given their experience and expertise.

"We're hoping to hire back some permanent staff, plus 25 to 30 seasonal people to work from May to December," Mancini said. "A number of positions are key, like head of public education. We'll focus on marketing and development, too."

Some of those laid off could return in different capacities, he said.

While he declined to discuss specifics of the museum's "trimmed down" budget, Mancini said changes are being made in the restaurant, where a downsized kitchen will produce more "culturally appropriate" fare than in the past. New retail offerings will be featured, and some of the museum's excess public space will be made available to Native American artists free of charge.

The museum's fate will ultimately hinge on its ability to reverse what Mancini said has been a steady, years-long decline in attendance, a trend somewhat inexplicably interrupted by a slight year-over-year increase last year. It's been reported that the museum drew 200,000 visitors a year in the mid-2000s, but more recent figures could not be obtained.

The museum does not report its attendance to either the Eastern Regional Tourism District or the state Office of Tourism.

Ed Dombroskas, the tourism district's executive director, said that while the museum's attendance in previous years was not as high as that of Mystic Aquarium, the region's best-attended tourist attraction, it may have been on a par with that of Mystic Seaport.

"It's such a great venue," Randy Fiveash, the state's tourism director, said of the museum. He recalled that foreign tourism operators toured the facility last spring while attending a conference in Groton.

"They came back with rave reviews," he said.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com

Twitter: @bjhallenbeck