Q: We’re sitting in one of the most interesting offices I think I’ve ever seen — it’s the dome from the planetarium in the old Dayton Museum of Natural History, before it was expanded into the Boonshoft museum. It’s very cool.
A: I look at this space from a historical perspective. It dates to 1960 and was designed by Richard Neutra, one of the foremost American architects of the 20th century. He was primarily known as a residential architect in the American west, with major projects all over the country. Every now and then we have people come through who are aficionados of his and want to see the office. We have his original drawings on the wall over there; if you go visit the new wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, you'll see drawings by him very much like those.
Q: Pretty neat.
A: It is. People remember being here as children and the dome is often their first memory of the museum. It would have been kind of awe-inspiring then — dimly lit, with the mechanical starball they used back then, circular bench seating for about 80 kids. The planetarium was last used about 1990.
Q: Talk about the path that brought you here.
A: I started working in museum settings my freshman year at Washington University in St. Louis. I worked in the ancient coin collection there, and studied ancient art and archaeology. I was director in 1977-78 at at the Museum of Art and History in Port Huron, Mich., then founding director of the Midwest Museum of American Art in Elkhart, Ind., until 1981. From 1981 to '86, I was founding director of the Minnesota Children's Museum in Minneapolis-St. Paul. After that, I was executive director to what was then the Museum of Art, Science and Industry in Bridgeport, Conn., then I was executive director of the Archaeological Institute of America in Boston. I started here on Jan. 10, 2000.
Q: Was this what you expected?
A: I thought I'd have a career in art museums, but opportunities came up that turned out to be a lot of fun. My background is in ancient art and archaeology, and I've also got experience with the hands-on, interactive aspect of museums. I think the combination of elements I put together in my career before coming here was somewhat unusual and a bit more diverse — I'd done everything we do in this institution with the exception of live animals. I hadn't run a zoo. But we're unusual organization here, with all the things we do.
Q: Unusual how?
A: A city of this size generally wouldn't have a zoo, a children's museum, a science center, a natural history museum. We do all that here.
Q: How many members?
A: About 5,500 member families. It's stayed pretty stable. We saw some growth when we reopened the zoo a few years ago. We hope we'll see some new membership from the new Springfield site.
Q: How did that expansion fit into your larger plans?
A: There has been a move among children's museums and science centers to open satellite facilities. We liked the idea of reaching into what we considered an underserved community, in terms of cultural attractions, learning attractions for families and that sort of thing. And Springfield is an appropriate distance from Dayton. So we investigated the options in Springfield and at the Upper Valley Mall, did a test at a small site there from March through August, were very well received by the community, did some surveys to see if we were on target with what they wanted, and moved ahead. We opened a few weeks ago.
Q: What will people see?
A: A mini-version of the Boonshoft, 60,000 square feet. We'll have traveling exhibitions, spaces for younger children and toddlers. There's a 2,000-square-foot O-gauge model train. It's big. We have exhibits dealing with simple machines, the human body, travel around the world. Something new is a maker's space, a workshop area where parents and caregivers can experiment with making things out of different materials with their kids. It's a new concept for us. There's a small insect zoo, and we hope to have other animals there someday. There's a retail shop.
Q: So, how does a big project like that, or like taking on the management of Fort Ancient, affect the main museum?
A: I look at a project like Springfield as a testing ground where we can try some things and bring them over here. There's more opportunity now for us to do that kind of experimentation, such as the maker's space. If it's as successful I suspect it will be, we'll see how to do one in Dayton, too.
Q: Any other such experiments on the horizon?
A: We could identify some communities that might have the same set of needs and opportunities as Springfield presented, sure. We'll have to see how this model goes first, though.
Q: Talk about how SunWatch changed things.
A: The history there goes back to 1970, when the Dayton Society of Natural History began excavating it for 17 years. It's the most excavated Fort Ancient culture site in the Midwest. It opened to the public in 1988, and it's really unique to have a site like that in an urban area. In most cases, they've been destroyed by development. So we had a long relationship with SunWatch, so that when the opportunity came up a few years ago to work with the state historical society to take over management of Fort Ancient park in Warren County in 2009, we knew what we were doing. And at a higher level, the Fort Ancient people, their culture and their architecture is our main research topic at the museum — so our anthropology/archaeology staff knew where to go with the scholarship and the research. In the case of the Fort Ancient site, we knew the site manager who was already working there and knew we would want to keep him on, and we saw how we could modify the operation and open it up to the public for 55 more days a year. It's worked out really well.
Q: Between SunWatch and Fort Ancient, your organization is really the primary caretakers of the memory of an entire ancient culture.
A: It's a big deal for us. We employ more archaeologists in this region than any other non-profit organization. There's one at Wright State, none at UD, and our staff teach at both of those. It stems back to our roots as the Dayton Society of Natural History, so that we're still a collections-based museum that also operates these historic outdoor sites.
Q: Do you think people know enough about them?
A: I would say no, and I say that because, when I came here in 2000, we did a market survey and found that 80 percent of people in the Dayton area had never been to SunWatch. I would anecdotally confirm that. There are many community leaders who've never been there. To have this unique place preserved so well, and to be able to show how these people lived and built 800 years ago, that's really a special feature of SunWatch. Fort Ancient is significant as the largest manmade embankment system in North America, and it's right here — that's amazing. Most people don't know about these ancient cultures. Most people probably don't know we have mastodon kill sites in Ohio.
Q: You’re touching on the fact that most Americans don’t know that much about history, in general. Native Americans are a good case in point.
A: An unfortunate aspect of the way many people think about Indians is derived from popular media, TV, movies — and what they see are Plains Indians, living nomadically with teepees and horses. The continent was filled millions of Indians who were farmers, from coast to coast. They had many different types of housing, like what you can see at SunWatch. There's still a lot for people to learn about Native Americans — especially when you think about all the major earthworks here in Ohio from prehistoric people, which are just astounding.
Q: Haven’t you been excavating another prehistoric Indian site in the area that’s from the same era as SunWatch?
A: We still have an active Fort Ancient-culture site north of the museum, a village. We've had about 12 seasons of digging there. It's not as clearly defined as SunWatch, and we have some major research questions about it. Most significantly, we don't find as much in the way of farming implements as we did at SunWatch, so we're not quite sure what was happening there. But even at SunWatch, what we know and learn is always evolving.
Q: For instance?
A: Because the people there were prehistoric, we don't know which other Indian tribes they may be related to, if any. We try to compare the materials we've found there to evidence from historical cultures — there are some similarities to the Iroquois, for example. We don't know for sure how they built their homes — we know where, because we can see post holes, but we have to experiment with the architecture. We study our reconstructions and watch them age and deteriorate, then talk with other experts about roof thatching, how it might have been done, and then rebuild.
Q: How long was it an active village?
A: The original inhabitants probably didn't stay long — maybe about 20 years. They would have used up resources, and there's some speculation that there was a second occupation and also some infusion of Mississippian culture there. It's a very interesting place.
Q: Interesting that it’s not more widely known.
A: History tends to be taught from a regional perspective. Kids in Baltimore know plenty about the War of 1812, for instance, because Fort McHenry is there. The war happened here, too, but how many people know much about it? Fortunately, science transcends that.
Q: How did the economic crunch of the last few years affect you?
A: Well, I'm really proud of what we accomplished through the recession and what were able to do. We started on our five-year plan, we redid the Discovery Zoo at the museum, we redid the planetarium, we received a NOAA grant to create the "Science on a Sphere" exhibit that shows weather and earth patterns. We received our largest federal grant ever, from NASA, for our exoplanets exhibition, which is coming up in 2014 — it's about the effort to look for distant planets revolving around other suns. We were able to keep things moving with a combination of state, federal and foundation giving, and with a small amount of individual giving. We never had to do a major campaign during the recession, which is good.
Q: What’s your overall budget?
A: All told, about $4.5 million a year.
Q: As a non-profit, is it harder or easier now to do what you do in this region?
A: I came here in 2000, which is considered the end of an era — the last few years in which there were major corporate headquarters in Dayton. I got to interact with those companies for a while before they moved from the area, and it's a different era now. It was easier then to raise significant funds. I'm not sure what you were able to do in the 1990s could be duplicated today. It's just not the same. I think we just have to be realistic about it. We set goals during the recession and had lots of things to do, and we managed to do them. Other organizations did the same thing. Dayton has a strong arts community, obviously, especially when you look at many larger cities without symphonies, say, or opera companies — things we still have. Our institution falls outside that cultural sphere, and more into the educational sphere.
One thing you can’t avoid these days in education is STEM — we’re all about it here. We’re always looking at our role there — for example, we’re going to do more robotics programs for kids. We’re considered an informal setting for science education, but that doesn’t mean we don’t take it very seriously. We operate on so many different levels that we know we might be the place where kids get to interact with science and we provide the spark that might lead them to go into scientific careers. We get letters and calls from parents all the time, saying their kids went on to pursue science after they came to the Boonshoft and did programs here.
Q: You have adults coming here, too.
A: We're not strictly a children's museum, that's true. About 40 percent of our visitors are adults. We also play a part in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at the University of Dayton.
Q: What did you mean about this being a place where informal learning happens?
A: Well, we're not a school. But school isn't where most children learn science. You're only in school about 5 percent of your life and the fact is you learn more science in the rest of the time than when you're in school. "Free choice learning" is the term for where most people learn — they choose to come here, or go to some other museum or park. You know, you're always hearing about how poorly Americans compare educationally around the world, but really it turns out not to be true. American adults do better than many others around the world, and that may be because of the wealth of free-choice science we have in this country. And it's impressive, too, what museums and science centers can accomplish, in terms of making people scientifically literate. With us, it starts with our programs for young people, from summer camps to working with Montessori students, to our engagement with pre-K readiness. We juggle a lot of balls. But it's exciting.
Q: What do you like best about what you do?
A: Just being able to stay intellectually engaged in so many different areas, and interested in everything we do here. And I really believe in this as a public service, and that we do this to serve our community. It's a tremendous resource for learning, and it's really important — this area is really fortunate to have it.
Q: What keeps you up at night?
A: Well, as a non-profit leader, just being able to keep the doors open. We're lucky to have an endowment that many institutions may not have, and that helps us along. But we always have to be cognizant of the financial aspects of what we do. Things are slowly getting better, but it's just going to take time. That's all there is to it.
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