Alison Rempel Brown says her young nieces adore the Science Museum of Minnesota's Collectors Corner, where kids can bring things they find in nature — the girls' latest was an owl pellet that yielded tiny bones! — and talk about them with a volunteer.
Yet parents often can't help but turn their backs on the conversation and ponder the expansive view of the Mississippi River rolling along behind the building.
As they should. A river is science. (Actually, Brown says, everything in life is science.)
"But did you see all the barriers we put in your way?" she asked, nodding at the several exhibit dividers between the lobby and the view. She smiled. "We just can't help ourselves from putting up things. We want people to learn more."
Brown is the Science Museum's 16th president and CEO, succeeding Eric Jolly, who left last year after 11 years to head Minnesota Philanthropy Partners. Her realm is 370,000 square feet of space filled with science from dinosaurs to space exploration that attracts more than 1 million visitors annually from around the world.
For starters, Brown wants to improve the museum's "public flow," to connect people to place, such as pondering the Mississippi.
Her own sense of this place remains an indelible memory of when the California transplant first visited the state.
"It was the winter of 1983," she said. "It was so cold. There were 12 days when it didn't get above zero."
Today, though, "the gear is better." She should know; she's stocked up for the long haul.
Making science less scary
Brown, 58, arrives at a time when she says museums "matter more than ever."
Surveys show that visitors place an almost extraordinary degree of trust in museums — one found that more than eight in 10 find them "very trustworthy," seeing them as "guardians of factual information."
As science becomes more complex and even politicized, a science museum's role becomes more crucial.
Founded in 1907 as a natural history museum, the museum now has a budget of about $40 million. Its latest coup came in April when NASA awarded it $14.5 million to help lead a national effort to promote space and Earth science.
"Science has been made to seem scary and even threatening because technology is changing so fast," Brown said. "But so much of what we do every day is based on science. Science helps us make the right decisions in our lives.
"So how do we make that more visible? How do we get away from science being 'over there' and we're 'over here'? How can we help scientists better explain what they're doing?"
Brown comes from a family of scientists. Her father was an early entrepreneur in laser technology and her mother was trained in childhood education. A sister and brother are physicists.
"I'm the black sheep," she said dryly, with degrees in economics and math. But she chalks that up to inheriting her father's entrepreneurial leanings. (See? Science.)
Her job history speaks to science, as well, sometimes in ways that were unforeseen.
In the 1980s, she was at the Blood Centers of the Pacific, based in San Francisco, when the AIDS crisis hit.
"You went from being at cocktail parties where people would say, 'Oh, you're saving lives,' to a few months later people saying, 'Why are you killing kids?' " she said, recalling how no one realized how some blood tranfusions had been compromised by donors who had AIDS. Ryan White, an Indiana boy who contracted AIDS after a transfusion in 1984, helped focus attention on blood supply safety.
Brown comes to the Science Museum after 17 years with the huge California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. As chief financial officer and then chief of staff, she was recognized in 2009, 2010 and 2011 by the Business Times as one of the Bay Area's most influential women in business.
Brown is the Science Museum's first female president and CEO, a distinction, she said, that "only matters in that I realize I'm a role model for younger women."
She never joined women-only groups; being female in business wasn't something to which she ever gave much thought. "I've never had any overt reaction because I'm a woman."
Don't outgrow the museum
Brown exudes a bit of California. Her smile glistens; her hair is cut in a chic angular style. She wears beaded jewelry that she makes herself, scrounging for odd materials such as tiny radio transistors. She loves working with glass beads from World War II, hidden away when officials decided that bead factories made good bullet factories.
But her Minnesota roots run deep.
Her father's father fled Prussia in 1880 and settled in St. James, Minn. Her grandmother's family settled in nearby Butterfield. In the 1920s, her grandparents met at Carleton College in Northfield. But when California began marketing its growing citrus industry, along with its warmth and sunshine, Minnesota had no chance against Pasadena.
She and her husband, an artist, still have relatives here. A niece teaches at St. Catherine University; another owns the Sassy Spoon restaurant near Lake Nokomis. (A son and daughter are in California, and another son is in Denver.)
The first new exhibit under Brown's watch will be one built around sports, supporting her philosophy that interactive exhibits best combine education and fun.
"We'll have a screen where you can race a T. rex," she said, adding, with a gleam, that "you'll never win."
There'll be science about baseball and bicycling, and enabling disabled visitors to participate is a priority.
She wants to break down any barriers that keep visitors from asking questions. "The more you have conversations with staff here, the more likely you'll return."
Mostly, she'd like to bolster the idea that the museum, a nonprofit with an annual budget of about $40 million, is not just for youngsters.
"Half of our visitors come without kids," she said.
The museum's popular adults-only "date nights" regularly fill the halls, reminding grown-ups that learning is a work in progress and that discovering stuff is fun.
Brown flashed her quick smile: "Just because you believe something doesn't make it so."
Kim Ode • 612-673-7185 • @Odewrites
