Paleontologist to become next CEO of Denver museum

A careful scientist but colorful speaker, Kirk Johnson had led the Snowmastodon excavation before spending the last 14 years at the Smithsonian

Kirk Johnson has been appointed as the next president and CEO of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. He will replace the current CEO, George Sparks, on Feb. 1.

A paleontologist by training, with a doctorate from Yale University, Johnson is a colorful speaker and an intrepid explorer. “I am delighted to be coming home, and I am excited to reunite with the people who make this museum so extraordinary,” said Johnson in a statement posted on the museum’s website.

Johnson’s manner is evident in the title of one of the 17 books he has written: “Cruisin‘ the Fossil Freeway: An Epoch tale of a Scientist and an Artist on the Ultimately 5,000-Mile Paleo Road Trip.” One reviewer had this to say: “A fascinating travelogue, Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway shows us that fossils are everywhere if you learn to look for them—even at 65 miles per hour.

He has also presented many television documentaries, including the NOVA programs “Making North America,” “Polar Extremes” and “Ice Age Footprints.

In 2010, after bones of mastodons were discovered by excavators of a 17-acre reservoir site in Snowmass Village, Johnson oversaw the careful but extraordinarily rapid extraction of 35,000 vertebrate fossils, including not only the mammoths and mastodons but also horses, ground sloths, camels and deer. The bones were from the last interglacial period, roughly 125,000 years ago.

The site project quickly came to be known as Snowmastodon.

After 20 years with the Denver museum, Johnson left in 2012 to join the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. There, he leads one of the Smithsonian’s most visited museums and oversees the world’s largest natural history collection, nearly 149 million specimens and artifacts. During his tenure, it opened the David H. Koch Hall of Fossils – Deep Time, a major exhibition connecting the history of life on Earth with humanity’s future.

Museum trustees chose Johnson for the experience he brings as the museum prepares for its next chapter.

“Kirk is both well known to this Museum and respected on the international stage,” said Jena Hausmann, chair of the Museum’s Board of Trustees. “He has spent 14 years leading one of the world’s great natural history museums, and that experience is exactly what our next chapter calls for.”

“Kirk was an extraordinary colleague and scientific leader here, and watching him lead the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History has been a source of great pride,” said Sparks, the current CEO. “He knows this place, he knows this community and he has continued to grow as a leader. I can think of no one better prepared to guide the museum’s next chapter.”