Local News in Brief : Conservancy Director

The Los Angeles Conservancy--the metropolitan area’s primary private preservationist group--has named anthropologist Jay Rounds as its executive director.

Rounds, 43, the former chief curator of the California Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles, was selected after a five-month nationwide search. Rounds, who holds a doctorate in anthropology from UCLA and was a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, is working out the group’s downtown headquarters.

Howard M. Heitner, president of the conservancy, said Rounds’ immediate task is to advise the City Council in considering a new ordinance that would strengthen preservation laws and expand the powers of the Cultural Heritage Commission.