The longtime head of Montana State University’s Museum of the Rockies has said she plans to retire at the end of the year, university officials announced today.

Executive Director Shelley McKamey, who is the longest-serving director in the museum’s history, joined the museum in 1987 as its first marketing director. She held marketing, public relations, development, membership, publications and operations responsibilities until 2003 when she was named head of the museum.

“We extend our deepest thanks to Executive Director McKamey for her many years of service and devotion to the MSU Museum of the Rockies,” said MSU President Waded Cruzado. “Her work has helped position the Museum of the Rockies as one of the world's finest research and history museums.”


During McKamey’s 14 years as executive director, she and the staff completed a number of privately funded projects which changed the face of the museum, including opening the Siebel Dinosaur Complex with its “Dinosaurs Under the Big Sky” exhibit, renovating and upgrading the Taylor Planetarium to a digital format, developing the Living History Farm, opening the “Tyrant Kings” exhibit starring Montana’s T. rex, and expanding the Children’s Discovery Center with its “Welcome to Yellowstone” theme.

With agreement from the board of trustees, McKamey broadened the philosophy of the museum’s changing exhibits to “bring the world to Montana and share Montana with the world.” This change led to exhibits such as “Tutankhamun: Wonderful Things From The Pharaoh’s Tomb,” “Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero: The Villas of Oplontis Near Pompeii,” “Leonardo da Vinci: Machines in Motion,” and four animal exhibits, including the recent and popular “CROCS: Ancient Predators in a Modern World.” At the same time, the museum’s traveling dinosaur exhibits in Asia helped sustain its paleontology program.

The series of successful exhibits brought to Bozeman helped make the museum one of the state’s top 10 tourist destinations and the most-visited museum in Montana.

MOR welcomed a record 196,201 visitors to the museum in 2017.

Also in 2017, the museum completed the new, privately funded Curatorial Center for the Humanities, a 20,000-square-foot facility to house its archaeology, art, history and photography collections. The museum is also renovating vacated collections spaces in the current building for paleontology collections.

McKamey invested heavily in the museum’s education and public programs, including the development of the Living History Program, which includes the Living History Farm and Tinsley House. In 2016, the museum served more than 50,000 people in its programs, welcomed more than 15,000 K-12 school children and MSU students, and saw more than 40,000 visitors tour the Tinsley House, heirloom gardens and grounds, McKamey said.

McKamey also helped rebuild awareness of the Museum of the Rockies as a history museum. In 2009, she negotiated the donation of the regionally significant Hamilton Povah Yellowstone Collection.

Under McKamey’s leadership, in 2008 the museum earned its third accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums. It became a Smithsonian affiliate in 2005, and it has continued as a repository for fossils found on federal lands.

An independent research group determined in 2014 that the Museum of the Rockies had a $47 million economic impact on Gallatin County annually.

McKamey said she considers her greatest accomplishment at MOR to be assembling and nurturing an “outstanding” team of professionals, and she is proud of the museum’s wide-ranging impact.

“I am most proud of the impact MOR has had on people’s lives, whether they were kids who were inspired because of something they saw at the museum, tourists who learned something new about Montana history or our ‘Big Sky,’ volunteers and docents who found their efforts rewarding, families who had new opportunities with their children, MSU students who pursued their career choices, or staff who saw their work contribute to the museum’s reputation for excellence,” McKamey said.

Michael Conlon, president of the museum’s board of trustees, said the board values McKamey’s long experience and deep knowledge.

“She knows the museum inside and out, and that knowledge has led to a number of successes over the years at the Museum of the Rockies,” Conlon said. “We are certainly going to miss her.”

MSU will conduct a national search for the next executive director.