The search committee charged with selecting Louis A. Zona’s successor as executive director of the Butler Institute of American Art will start interviewing candidates in March.

Interim director Larry W. Jones said a search firm was hired about five weeks ago, and they started accepting applications about two weeks after that.

“Our search firm does the preliminary conversations, and then the search committee — there’s five people on the search committee — we’re narrowing it down to the three to five people that we want to meet,” Jones said. “We’ve been getting some great responses and great resumes coming through.”

The interviews will start via Zoom with the committee, and the top candidates will be brought to Youngstown for final interviews.

“We’re in the middle of it, and I’m really optimistic,” Jones said. “There’s a lot of great talent out there.”

The Butler Board of Trustees announced in December that it was appointing Jones as interim director and would conduct an international search for a permanent replacement for Zona, who was appointed director in 1981 and now serves as director emeritus.

Jones, an Austintown native, is a former president of the Nickelodeon cable channel’s “Nick @ Nite” programming and the spinoff channel TV Land. He is an avid art collector but said he only will be an “interim” director.

“I would take this job in a second if my family would move back to Ohio,” Jones said.

“But my wife’s from Brooklyn, and my grandkids are here, and we’re staying in New York. We’re anchored here, but it’s a great job, and it’s a great opportunity to really take the museum to its next iteration.”