Vice President - Museum

About the role

The Vice President of Museum provides executive leadership for the museum experience, ensuring the U.S. Space & Rocket Center delivers engaging, educational, and mission-aligned experiences for guests while safeguarding the institution’s collections, archives, exhibitions, and planetarium programming.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Leadership and Museum Oversight
• Provide executive leadership for the museum division, including Museum Visitor Services, Planetarium, Exhibition Management, and Collections and Archives.
• Develop and implement museum strategies that advance the Center’s mission, improve the guest experience, strengthen educational impact, and support long-term institutional growth.
• Lead planning and execution for new, refreshed, and traveling exhibitions, with emphasis on compelling storytelling, accessibility, visitor flow, interactivity, and operational sustainability.
• Ensure museum programs, exhibitions, planetarium experiences, and interpretive activities reflect high standards of scholarship, guest engagement, safety, and mission alignment.
• Use data, financial analysis, audience feedback, and operational metrics to guide priorities, allocate resources, improve performance, and enhance the visitor experience.
• Collaborate with executive leadership, Education, Marketing, Facilities, Development, Finance, and external partners to align museum initiatives with institutional priorities.
• Represent the museum with internal and external stakeholders, including the Smithsonian Institution, aerospace partners, donors, community organizations, peer museums, and professional associations.
• Museum Visitor Services
• Oversee the visitor-facing museum experience, ensuring consistent, welcoming, safe, and engaging service from arrival through departure.
• Establish and monitor service standards, operating procedures, staffing models, training expectations, and performance goals for visitor services functions.
• Support ticketing, admissions, guest wayfinding, docent and volunteer engagement, crowd flow, accessibility, and front-of-house coordination.
• Partner with Facilities, Security, Exhibit Maintenance, and other operational teams to ensure public spaces, exhibits, and guest pathways are clean, functional, safe, and visitor-ready.
• Work with Marketing and Membership teams to support admissions initiatives, visitor communications, promotions, and audience development.
• Planetarium
• Provide executive oversight for the planetarium, ensuring programming is educational, engaging, scientifically accurate, and aligned with the Center’s mission.
• Guide the development of planetarium programming, special presentations, collaborations, and revenue-generating opportunities that enhance STEM education and visitor engagement.
• Ensure planetarium operations are properly staffed, scheduled, maintained, and supported by appropriate training and professional development.
• Support technology planning, equipment maintenance, system upgrades, and capital planning necessary to sustain a high-quality planetarium experience.
• Cook up with Education, Marketing, and museum leadership to promote planetarium offerings and integrate them into the broader guest experience.
• Exhibition Management
• Provide strategic direction for exhibition planning, design, fabrication, installation, maintenance, evaluation, and deinstallation.
• Lead cross-functional coordination among curatorial, creative, education, facilities, marketing, collections, and operations teams to deliver high-quality exhibitions on time and within budget.
• Oversee exhibit content development and interpretive planning to ensure exhibitions are accurate, engaging, inclusive, accessible, and aligned with institutional priorities.
• Establish project management practices, schedules, budgets, and decision-making structures for exhibition development and implementation.
• Assess exhibition performance through visitor feedback, attendance data, maintenance needs, educational impact, and operational outcomes.
• Collections and Archives
• Provide executive oversight for collections and archives stewardship, ensuring responsible care, documentation, preservation, access, and interpretation of institutional assets.
• Support policies and practices related to acquisitions, loans, deaccessions, conservation, registration, archival management, and collections documentation.
• Ensure collections and archives work is aligned with applicable museum standards, donor expectations, legal requirements, and Smithsonian Affiliate responsibilities.
• Promote appropriate access to collections and archives for exhibitions, research, education, public programs, digital initiatives, and institutional storytelling.
• Partner with Development and executive leadership on donor relations, artifact-related opportunities, grants, sponsorships, and strategic collections initiatives.
• Leadership, Budgeting, and Collaboration
• Direct, mentor, and evaluate senior museum leaders, fostering a culture of collaboration, accountability, professionalism, innovation, and guest-centered service.
• Lead annual planning, budgeting, forecasting, procurement, and resource allocation for assigned museum functions.
• Identify operational risks, staffing needs, capital priorities, and process improvements, and recommend practical solutions to the CEO and executive leadership team.
• Communicate clearly with staff, executive leadership, board members, visitors, donors, industry partners, and community stakeholders.
• Champion the U.S. Space & Rocket Center’s commitment to education, innovation, preservation, and the celebration of human space exploration.

Qualifications

• Required Education: Bachelor’s degree in museum studies, public history, history, science, education, business administration, nonprofit management, hospitality management, or a related field. Graduate degree preferred.
• Required Experience: At least five (5) years of high-level museum management experience, preferably in a leadership role within a high-traffic museum, science center, cultural institution, visitor attraction, or related public-facing organization. Ten (10) or more years of progressive senior leadership experience in museum operations, visitor services, exhibition management, collections, archives, planetarium operations, education, guest experience, or related institutional leadership.
• Demonstrated ability to lead multidisciplinary teams and align creative, curatorial, operational, educational, and guest-facing functions around shared strategic goals.
• Experience overseeing budgets, revenue and expense management, forecasting, procurement, contracts, project timelines, and operational performance metrics.
• Knowledge of museum standards and best practices related to visitor experience, exhibition development, collections care, archives, interpretation, accessibility, and safety.
• Strong strategic planning, problem-solving, analytical, and organizational skills, with the ability to manage complex priorities in a dynamic environment.
• Exceptional communication and relationship-building skills, including the ability to engage effectively with executive leadership, staff, board members, donors, partners, vendors, and the public.
• Experience working with or within Smithsonian Affiliates, science museums, aerospace organizations, or STEM-focused institutions is preferred.
• Passion for space exploration, science, education, history, and public engagement is strongly preferred.