Alistair Dove, CEO, Museum of Science and History (MOSH)
The MOSH is all about entertainment and storytelling. “People sometimes think museums are dusty, quiet places, and they don’t have to be that way. They can be exciting, vibrant, cultural attractions where you can learn,” Alistair Dove, CEO of the Museum of Science and History (MOSH), told Invest:.
As the new CEO of the MOSH, what are your main priorities and goals for the museum?
One of the things that I hope to accomplish by taking this role is to bring some of the experiences from my 18 years at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, which is one of the best public aquariums in the world. They have a tremendous focus on the quality of the guest experience, and I want to bring that to the museum, elevating the guest experience and activating the museum. People sometimes think museums are dusty, quiet places, and they don’t have to be that way. They can be exciting, vibrant, cultural attractions where you can learn. But you can also have fun, make great memories with your family, and have a great day out. That’s some of what I hope to bring to Jacksonville.
One of the big attractions for me coming here is the Genesis project. We’ve outgrown the San Marco site, and it’s time for Jacksonville to have a science and history museum it can be proud of. Coming in and being part of that team and helping to guide the design, construction, and opening phases of that new museum building was too good to resist. I had to come down and be part of that.
What is the state of the Genesis project?
The Genesis project continues its tremendous momentum. The $10 million gift from CSX was a marvelous contribution to the project. From the opening gifts from VyStar Credit Union to the $5 million that we received in the state budget, we really have continued to have great success in raising funds. The capital campaign is doing well, and we’ve met all of our fundraising goals with the city. Those goals were put in place to ensure that we would have enough money to build the kind of museum that Jacksonville needs and deserves and to get the support of the city to do so. There’s nothing in the way now other than design and construction and, of course, additional fundraising. As long as we continue to have the same sort of success that we’ve had, we’re confident that we can go ahead and begin construction sometime late next year. That would see us opening the museum in late 2027 or early 2028.
What initiatives will make the guest experience more interactive, or more like entertainment?
You can achieve that through a focus on compelling storytelling. Those stories often start with the artifacts because every object in the collection at a museum is a physical thing, but it’s also a story and a conversation starter. When you have an artifact that begins the conversation, then you can tell the stories associated with that artifact and engage people in learning about either the science of the object or the history that’s behind that object and how it came to be in the collection. For example, this year is an Olympic year, and we have in our collection an Olympic torch from one of the previous Olympic Games. That is a great artifact to bring out at this time of year and to start talking about the stories related to that artifact, and about sport and triumph and overcoming adversity and all of the great stories that go along with the Olympic Games.
We start that conversation with an artifact and use storytelling techniques. There’s a whole range of ways you can do that, a lot of which draw on technology these days. We can use augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.
What story do you hope to tell at the museum, considering that it is mainly focused on history and science?
This is an interesting part of the country in terms of storytelling, both about the natural history and the cultural history of this region. One of the things that struck me when I first came to Jacksonville was that there are so many stories that I am going to have to leave out because there are so many cool stories to tell, either about the science or the history of this area. For instance, if you go back to the Miocene Epoch, which was about 30 million years ago, there were megalodons swimming around in Jacksonville. Jacksonville was a shallow sea at the time. This was all underwater, and one of the greatest marine predators of all time, this giant shark that we call the megalodon, swam around here. You can still find their teeth to this day in rivers and creeks. That’s just one example of a natural history story.
On the cultural history side, the city of St. Augustine has done a wonderful job taking advantage of its Spanish colonial history, being one of the earliest occupied cities in the United States. But the French were here in Jacksonville before there were Spanish in St. Augustine, and we don’t tell that story well enough. I think a closer look at the French, and Spanish, and the interaction between the two because it wasn’t friendly, is an amazing part of the history of Jacksonville. And all of that played out against the backdrop of a rich and dynamic Indigenous history here that goes back thousands of years.
What is the outlook for the MOSH over the next two to three years?
One of the grand challenges that we’re going to face is how we build a new, world-class museum on the north bank of the river while also continuing to have vibrant offerings at the current museum site in San Marco. Managing this sort of duality, where you’re building a new museum and operating the current museum at the same time, is a bit of a challenge, but it’s one that we’re ready for. Everybody on the team is excited about being a part of that. We can use the current museum as a testbed for new ideas and programs that we might want to try at the new museum. By doing these sorts of things, we can rise to the challenge of running a museum and building a museum at the same time with the same team.
