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08/07/2018 12:00 AMChristopher Dobbs, who has been executive director of the Connecticut River Museum in Essex since 2013, is leaving on Aug. 17 to take a similar position as executive director of the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana. The museum, a part of Montana State University and an affiliate of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., is known for its extensive collection of North American dinosaur fossils.
“It’s a big museum; it has an auditorium, a planetarium, exhibits on geology, the history of the Rockies, a living history farm,” Dobbs said.
It also has a far larger staff for Dobbs to head and many more visitors. The Connecticut River Museum has five full time employees; the Museum of the Rockies, 34. Some 25,000 visitors a year come to the Connecticut River Museum. Museum of the Rockies has an annual attendance of 200,000.
Before the offer from Montana, Dobbs had not been looking for a new job.
“I honestly love it here. The Connecticut River Museum is a gem and the region is beautiful,” he said.
Still, when he got an email about the position opening, he checked on a museum professional’s website and called the contact listed in the job post. It was a recruiter whose particular field was filling jobs at university museums. They spoke for 50 minutes and she encouraged Dobbs to apply for the Montana job.
“She told me it was the next step up for me. I’d been middle management and then headed two small museums, now it was time to consider a larger museum,” he said.
Dobbs was associate director of education at the Mystic Seaport: Museum of America and the Sea and then executive director of the Noah Webster Museum and the West Hartford Historical Society before coming to the Connecticut River Museum.
Dobbs talked with his wife Jennifer White-Dobbs, who is the education director and marketing coordinator for the Connecticut River Museum. She told him it didn’t hurt to apply and see what happened.
“I figured they wouldn’t want a guy from New England, anyway, and with their collection, they might be looking for a paleontologist,” he said.
He decided to send a letter, as the recruiter had suggested, detailing his experience, interests, and vision of the role of a museum in the larger community.
“I asked how long it should be and she said up to six pages, so I wrote six pages,” Dobbs said.
After being chosen as one of the six finalists for the position, Dobbs underwent an extensive interview process. When on a layover in Chicago returning from the last round of interviews in Montana, he saw a telephone call from the president of the university come up on his cell phone. He couldn’t answer because he was on the airplane and the instruction to turn off cell phones had just been given. He telephoned back when he got to the airport in Rhode Island and learned he was being offered the position.
Dobbs will start his new job on Sept. 1, but his family will join him later, a result of White-Dobbs’ positions at the museum.
“We both didn’t want to leave at the same time. Even though I’m leaving, I feel great responsibility for this museum,” he said.
In addition, his sons Zach, 14 and Liam,11, wanted a chance to say goodbye to school friends. Dobbs said the family will probably be united in Montana by the end of October.
Suzanne Burns, currently White-Dobbs’s assistant, will take over her position. The museum board of trustees has formed a search committee to look for a replacement for Dobbs.
In Montana, Dobbs said, there are a number of smaller museums where his wife, who has a master’s degree in museum studies, might work, or she might go back to college for education credits so she can teach.
As he looks back on his time at the Connecticut River Museum, Dobbs is particularly proud of s successful capital campaign that has already raised 90 percent of its $5 million goal. Part of that money has been used to make crucial repairs to the steamboat dock along the river and to pay off the $900,000 mortgage on the Lay House, a second property the museum owns across a driveway from the main building.
That driveway provided Dobbs with his most contentious time at the Connecticut River Museum through a dispute with Essex Boat Works/Carlson Landing, which owns the land and plans a restaurant-office complex that will use the driveway area as part of the new construction, thus necessitating another way for visitors to the museum to cross to the Lay House.
The Town of Essex approved the Carlson Landing project and now Dobbs said a generous donor will fund a new set of stairs off Main Street to provide easy access the Lay House. Dobbs feels the hard feelings engendered in the dispute have been assuaged.
“We think the restaurant will benefit from the museum and the museum will benefit from the restaurant,” he said.
When he reviews the exhibits he oversaw, Dobbs said he particularly remembers Invaders!, a multi-media display of how 10 invasive plant and animal species have changed the ecology and environment of the Connecticut River. He regrets that he will not be here for an exhibit opening in November on myths and legends of the Connecticut River that he has worked to put together since he arrived at the museum.
Moving west will be a new experience for Dobbs. He grew up in Ridgefield and described himself as a “proud resident of Deep River since 2001.” He has been involved in the community as well as the museum. He and both sons have taken music lessons for many years at the Community Music School in Centerbrook; White-Dobbs coached soccer.
“I’m going to miss the incredibly dedicated staff at the museum and the wider community. There are wonderful people here,” Dobbs said.
But he is also eager to take on the challenge of his new position.
“I’ve had an interest in Montana ever since I saw A River Runs Through It,” a movie in which fly fishing is a continuing plot element, he admitted.
And the first weekend Dobbs is on the job in Montana, he will be fly fishing himself at a tournament that is a fundraiser for the Museum of the Rockies.