The Long—Really Long—Buildup‌

Q: How important has the master plan you developed in the ’90s been to the museum?‌

We adopted our master plan in 1993, and we are still working on it. In fact, we’re now in our last major project, which is our new air and space center. ‌

If I go back to 1992, the year before we adopted the master plan, we knew we wanted to do air and space as one of our major exhibit thematic areas. We had also identified that we would incorporate actual artifacts, aircraft and spacecraft, along with the hands-on science exhibits that we’re known for. And in our master plan, we considered, what are big things we might want that would require significant physical space that we should plan for. I still have a rendering in my office from 1992 showing a space shuttle in launch position in the future museum. And sure enough, it is there now as we finish our building. ‌

A lot happened in between that rendering and the reality. We’ve gotten better and better and we’ve grown. When we finish this campaign, we’ll be about $800 million into the master plan. And I will say when we started, that would have been hard to even imagine. For our first phase, we had a $130 million campaign and thought that was a stretch.‌

Q: Take me back to the beginning. How do you conceive of a master plan that’s going to take decades?‌

You start young and a little naïve. I honestly did not know it was going to be 30 years, but we knew it was a long-term plan.‌

I will credit a couple of my board members from back then who were both developers. They said to me, “You should realize up front that you can limit your thinking and do small things incrementally. Or you can think big and find that you can get the support for a big idea, even if it’s a lot more money and a lot harder. You’ll get the support if it’s a really good idea.”‌

We then set out to look around the world at all kinds of science centers and museums—big and small—and came up with ideas of what we thought worked well. I’ll give you a couple of examples: The National Air and Space Museum has been the most attended museum in the world for years. That tells you something. Zoos and aquariums: more attended than any other type of museum. We’re doing ecology, so we said, we should incorporate live animals and attract that audience. We’re picking and choosing things from all over that worked. At the master plan level, we stuck to that, but we continue to learn and evolve to develop good experiences. And I’m not ashamed of adapting something good that others have done to meet our mission and purpose. ‌

Q: You’ve been there 40-plus years. What led you to do this work?‌

Growing up I always had an interest in science, and I started out with real interest in marine biology. I’ve followed a path where I didn’t go into science, as such, but I’ve always had a fascination with it. When I left Yale, I went to Sacramento and worked for the state legislature. And after that I was asked to work at one of the cabinet agencies, which included what was then the Museum of Science and Industry. The then-director of the museum died suddenly, and the agency secretary asked if I’d be willing to go to LA for a few months to keep an eye on things at the museum. ‌

I thought, “I could go to LA for the summer. I could hang out on the beach some and the museum sounds interesting.” So I agreed, and that was 43 years ago. ‌

I stayed as a deputy director for about five years and then took over. I saw the potential in the museum, and I thought science was critical for society. That’s even more true today. Critical thinking and science education are incredibly important, and science centers and museums can play an important role. We’re in LA, a huge metropolitan area in a state that has built itself largely on science, technology, and engineering, and our state didn’t have a great science center—but it had the potential to build one. So I was able to get support for the idea of doing a new master plan. ‌

We had a wonderful political coalition that backed the effort. That included then-assemblywoman Maxine Waters, who chaired our budget subcommittee, and then-Governor George Deukmejian. We had the political spectrum pretty well covered. ‌

We also recognized at the time I started that although the museum was funded jointly by the state and a nonprofit foundation, only about 15% of our support came through our foundation and the rest was state money. Over the years, we’ve built the foundation into a really strong nonprofit. About half of our operating budget and a majority of our capital projects are through our foundation.

Q: How has the master plan unfolded?‌

It included three phases of developing the facility and three parts of the facility—the public experience with the exhibits; a school that would serve as a model for integrating science, math, and technology in elementary school curricula; and our Center for Science Learning, which focuses on helping educators incorporate science and engineering in elementary schools.‌

Phase one was our original science center building, which included two major thematic areas: one about humans and other living things as individual organisms, which at the time we called World of Life, as well as an area that was more about technology and our built environment, that we call Creative World. Phase one also included our IMAX theater and our basic guest services—food service, gift shop, meeting spaces—and it included our school and center for science learning. ‌

Our second phase was ecosystems, which was our addition on the science of ecology and also included our administrative support space. Because it was about ecology, we said, “We should actually include living things.” So we became an accredited zoo and aquarium, and we have live animals and plants in our ecology exhibits. ‌

And then our third phase is air and space. We knew from the beginning that we wanted to get to air and space but that we couldn’t afford it immediately because of the scale of the building you need. That’s how it became the last phase. We initially thought we’d want to do the ecology section in our first phase, but we also realized that it was expensive because of the life support systems necessary for living collections. And we had a whole new expertise we’d have to build up in our staff.‌

Q: What are the pieces of the work that really draw you in and get you excited?‌

I think it’s two major pieces. One is the impact that we have on young people. Anytime I’m tired, I can walk out into the science center and see families and children from all backgrounds. The diversity of people who are here is amazing. Young people who are inspired and motivated and interested and move on to careers involved in science and engineering. Seeing the smiles and the excitement is really rewarding. ‌

The other piece of it is that I’m constantly learning. As we work on projects, I learn a lot. We do special exhibits from all over. We were the first place in the Western hemisphere to do the Body Worlds exhibit, and you get deep into anatomy when you’re doing that. If we do an exhibit on King Tut or Pompeii, you have to learn a lot when you’re working on it. We used to always say, I may not be an expert, but I have to know more than the people I’m talking to. ‌

Q: And you included a school. That seems ambitious and challenging.‌

It’s probably the most difficult thing we’ve ever done. What science centers do well is what is often called “free choice learning.” People choose to come here. That’s very different than formal learning in schools. And yet we found that science is not being taught in the elementary schools almost at all. So we do a great job and get kids excited about science, and then they go to school and lose that interest. We just said, “It would really be great if we could make an impact in the schools.” ‌

We set out to do more teacher professional development and help teachers, particularly in elementary schools, learn how to teach science. Then the opportunity appeared to do a school here that could be a model. We worked with the school district. Our school is an LA Unified School District school, but we have a charter, so it’s an affiliated charter where we are hybrid. That decision comes with challenges in terms of working with the bureaucracy of a large, urban school district. But our goal in the long term is to actually make a difference in the bigger school system. So we don’t want to be a separate and unique thing. We keep at it, and we’ve had successes and we’ve had frustrations.‌

It’s a neighborhood school. We didn’t want to do a school for the elite. We wanted to do a school for our neighborhood, which at the time was predominantly African American and Latino. Now our students are about 70% Latino and most of the rest African American. ‌

Q: How did the space shuttle come about? ‌

When NASA decided to retire the space shuttle program, they put out an RFP to make the orbiters available to museums anywhere in the country. There were three orbiters plus the Enterprise, which was used for testing landing. Twenty-nine museums put in proposals for space shuttles. So we went through the process, and we had the top score and were thrilled to be awarded Endeavour.‌

Q: Then you still had to get it there. I remember the newspaper photos when it was flown over and then moved through the streets.‌

The day after they awarded it to us, I got a call saying, “Be in Florida next Tuesday and Wednesday. We need to know how you’re going to move this from the airport.” And they ended up giving us six weeks to come up with a plan, which we did. ‌

We saw the flyover that they did when they delivered Discovery to DC and the shuttle carrier aircraft did a couple of passes around DC and then landed at Dulles, and it became a big thing people were talking about. So I went to NASA and said, “When we deliver Endeavour, we would like to fly around California.” And the first response was, “The mission is Kennedy Space Center to LAX—that’s it.” But a couple months later I get, “Will you pay for the fuel?”‌

I had a lot of fun planning the route for the flight around California with the pilots and with the whole team. Millions of people all over the state got involved in it. And I still hear from people in various parts of California about where they were when the shuttle flew over. School kids were out on the playgrounds. It was really rewarding.‌

Then three weeks later we moved through the city. That was three days and three nights nonstop, slowly moving through the streets. A lot of logistical challenges, and some political, in getting it through, because it’s not normal to move a space shuttle through a city. We had to move trees and telephone poles and utility lines and streetlights all along the route. But in the end, we had over a million people line the streets. ‌

Then putting the shuttle stack together involved doing something that’s never been done outside of a NASA or Air Force facility, and we were doing it in an outdoor open-air environment. We were using two big cranes, the bigger one a 450-foot crane. And a space shuttle is a glider. So if you lift it 300 feet in the air, any wind makes it start swinging on the end of the crane. It was incredibly challenging, but also another opportunity to engage people and get the whole community involved. ‌

Q: You mentioned politics in figuring out how to bring a space shuttle through town. What are the key political challenges you’ve worked through over these decades?‌

You build relationships over years, whether it’s with a philanthropic private donor or business relationship or a political relationship. I think like anything, it’s based on integrity, following through on what you say you’re going to do, and respecting others.

So when we moved the shuttle through the streets, we had to work with the mayors of two cities and with members of the city council. We had strong relationships with many of them. And where we didn’t, we knew people who did and just worked through the process of engaging with the elected leadership first and then with the communities. ‌

We had some big issues. We did everything we could to minimize disruption, particularly to trees. But we had to take down some trees and that became the biggest fight politically. We had equipment that allowed us to move at right angles and move with great precision, but we still needed to get 78 feet to fit the wings through. When we had a choice, we would always move a streetlight or a telephone pole before we took a tree down. But where there was no choice, we took down trees. We ended up agreeing to plant three times as many trees as we took down. ‌

I went out to community meetings throughout the route and talked to people and answered every question and tried to do everything we could to compromise and reach agreements—and sometimes just had to say, “Nope, we can’t do that.”‌

Q: Tell me what you are looking forward to in the next few years.‌

Finishing and opening our air and space center is right up top. Then after that I’d like to do a rainforest exhibit we weren’t able to finish. I’ve always been interested in it. We’re also already starting work on refreshing our earlier exhibits because science exhibits that are 25 years old are too old. I also am thinking about succession planning because I know I won’t be here forever.‌

Q: As a native of Northern California who has committed so much of your life to LA and this organization, how has your view of the city grown and changed?‌

It took me a little while, but I absolutely love LA. It’s truly an international city. Opportunities abound here. People are open and innovative. And I think that some of the things that we’ve done with this place couldn’t happen elsewhere. There’s an openness to change and openness to new things. It’s unusual. It’s also challenging in many ways. But I find the place great—the ethnic diversity, the food, the whole environment. And the weather’s pretty darn good, too.‌

Q: With the wildfires, the city is going through a challenging moment.‌

It is. And it’s not going to be the last, unfortunately, but we will get through it. It’s not a great time to be trying to finish fundraising on a huge project because the focus of everybody is on the fires. But that will change. With time, people will recognize that we’ve got to keep doing other things to improve our community and to educate and inspire our young people in addition to rebuilding. ‌

Q: Even though you’ve gone through COVID and now the wildfires, you don’t sound discouraged about the future for the museum. ‌

I’m not. I can’t be. I’ve seen a lot. I’ve done a lot. And I know that we continue to have great support from people. We are a creative organization. I think we have confidence that we’ll get through it. We might have to not do everything we want to do. I often find myself saying, “I really want to do this, but I think I have to back off a little bit because I can’t push our staff beyond reasonable limits.” And it’s OK, because trying to do more than we can is always good. I would feel we were in bad shape if we weren’t creative enough to have more ideas than we have resources to do. ‌

It may be age or maturity or whatever you call it, but I’m realistic and I realize that it’s taken us 30 years to do our master plan; if it takes 32, that’s not the end of the world. I have faith that what we’re doing is good enough that it will survive.‌