When it comes to hiring leaders, arts groups gravitate toward imports. The drill, especially in large organizations, is that a search firm is engaged, a field of national candidates is captured and winnowed, and an outsider wins the job.

But with the retirement of Nancy D. Kolb, the Please Touch Museum has decided to tap one of its own: Laura H. Foster, a children's museum leader who has worked at Please Touch for 18 years, will take over as president and chief executive officer after Kolb retires Nov. 20.

"I'm really proud of what we created here," said Foster about the museum, which about a year ago left Center City for larger, splashier quarters in Fairmount Park's Memorial Hall. "I want to see us sustain our momentum and get even better at serving our audience. I'd like to see more school groups and more families and build on some of the things we've begun. We have a new music department - I'd like to see where we go with that - and develop more partnerships like the one we have with Walnut Street Theatre," in which the troupe mounted a scaled-down Berenstain Bears show at the Please Touch.

Foster, 61, has cycled through four other positions at the museum since 1991 - executive director, senior vice president and chief of staff, vice president of development, and director of development and marketing. She has an undergraduate degree in anthropology from Barnard College, a law degree from the University of Baltimore School of Law, and graduated from the Getty Museum Management Institute.

In the last few years, Foster has undertaken day-to-day operations of the museum while Kolb has dealt with the more public functions of fund-raising, board, and press relations.

Kolb, who arrived at Please Touch in 1988, says the cultivation of Foster as her successor was a deliberate strategy started years ago. The decision was made official by the board in June.

"She and I have been comanaging this place, and it has only made consummate sense all along to take advantage of her knowledge. I have great confidence in her. We think alike, we respond to situations in very much the same way."

Kolb, 68, plans to consult, and will continue to divide her time between a townhouse in Jupiter, Fla., and the 1738 converted farmhouse in Doylestown she restored with husband Roy, a semi-retired investment broker.

She was to have retired in 2001, but an earlier attempt to move the museum to a new site in a shopping complex at Penn's Landing failed when the deal on the larger development fell apart. She stayed on to develop Plan B - Kolb likes to point out that the board didn't blame the staff for the false start - and see the project to completion.

It will be Foster's job now to tie up some significant loose ends. About $16 million still has to be raised to pay for the renovation of and move to Memorial Hall. That, plus the fact that the museum's former site in a building west of the Franklin Institute has not sold, leaves the Please Touch with a total funding gap of $22 million.

That means the museum hasn't raised any new money for the project since opening its doors in October.

"This is a hard climate for fund-raising, [though] we have a lot of activity going on," Foster said. But, "the buildings aren't selling."

Once Foster is out and about, taking on more of the public face of the museum, how will her personal style be compared to that of her predecessor?

Jolly, outspoken, a world-class charmer, and sometimes endearingly boisterous, Kolb has earned a place in the city's pantheon of boldly etched characters.

"I'm probably not as much of a character," said Foster. "I'm a little more straightforward, but I like to have fun. I wouldn't be here if I didn't."

Contact culture writer Peter Dobrin at 215-854-5611 or pdobrin@phillynews.com. Read his blog at www.philly.com/philly/blogs/artswatch/.