Dale Robertson’s lasting legacy: A museum that never stops learning

“I’m the first person in my family to graduate from high school. I know the value of an education.”

Dale Robertson said that in May, speaking to a packed reception of educators involved in the Grand Rapids Public Museum‘s Immerse program. His voice grew emotional, even breaking a little, as he recalled the process that turned a city’s collection of artifacts into something much more: a place where the people of this place (and now, more than ever, those who visit us) can make sense of our city … and our world.

I’ve interviewed and talked with Robertson many times over the years for our Bridge to Community Curiosity series on the power of public museums, and what stays with me isn’t the list of his accomplishments. It’s how he approaches the work: listening, learning, and, when something needs to change, working with others to make it happen.

That may sound simple; however, as anyone who has worked inside an institution knows, it isn’t.

On Thursday, Nov. 12, the museum will honor its retiring president and CEO with the 2026 Jay & Betty Van Andel Lifetime Achievement Award at its Legacy Awards Gala. With Robertson set to retire Dec. 31, it’s a fitting opportunity to consider what he’s leaving behind and what’s still in motion.

Education beyond the glass

Robertson, who helped guide the museum’s transition from city department to an independent nonprofit, became president and CEO in 2008. Anyone who stepped into a leadership role right as the financial crash hit that October deserves a medal, but his most consequential shift may have been a philosophical one: treating the museum not simply as the custodian of our city’s history, as the Grand Rapids city charter outlines, but as an educational institution responsible for sharing it with the wider community.

He once described finding old, mimeographed museum lesson plans and taking them home for his wife, a former teacher, and her friends to look over. Their verdict? The material still had value. The museum needed to reconnect with educators.

That thinking helped fuel Immerse, a GRPM education-centered program in which classrooms spend a week learning inside the museum, and the Grand Rapids Public Museum School, which opened in 2015 through a partnership with Grand Rapids Public Schools. The museum’s recent expansion, completed under Robertson’s leadership, was built with room for even more students.

“We started breaking museum rules,” Robertson told the gathering of educators, “and we started putting artifacts and specimens in people’s hands.”

Robertson wasn’t afraid to share the bumps along the way. He recalled a student who dropped and broke a mastodon tooth. The museum’s education team didn’t abandon hands-on learning as a result. They just adjusted how students handled the artifacts, keeping an element of learning that access to the artifacts provides.

Robertson often says that sometimes learning involves taking a risk, and getting uncomfortable helps us detach from old ways as we open ourselves to other possibilities. And sometimes the lesson isn’t just for the children, but for the adults, too. Maybe this is a learning technique worth traveling with for a lifetime. 

Listening that changes the work

In a February 2026 interview, Robertson described how conversations with occupational therapists, educators, and disability advocates reformed the museum’s approach to accessibility.

“If you get it right, for those of us on the edges of the spectrum,” he said, “it improves the experience for those of us in the middle.”

That philosophy eventually shaped Sensory Sundays, exhibit lighting and sound, and an approach to Universal Design for Learning that was integrated into the museum’s everyday work instead of saved for special programming.

You can hear it in the recently reopened Anishinaabek: The Original People of This Place exhibition, too. Guided by Indigenous curators, artists, and an advisory council representing tribal communities across our region of Michigan, the redesign changes whose stories are shared and how.

At the October opening, Robertson said, “How you do something is as important, if not more important, than what you do.”

That line captures a leadership style I’ve seen again and again: invite people into the conversation, respect their expertise, and be willing to change course. These achievements belong to a dedicated museum team and its many community collaborators as much as to the departing leader. This approach has been a wonderful addition to how our museum stands out among public museums, and it is distinctly ours.

What keeps moving

You can see it outdoors, too. This spring, the museum opened its riverfront expansion, giving residents and visitors new ways to experience the Grand River and connect with the region’s history.

And on Nov. 3, Kent County voters renewed the joint John Ball Zoo–Grand Rapids Public Museum millage by roughly a 2-to-1 margin, providing another decade of funding for these community institutions.

That vote wasn’t a referendum on one person, but the timing is striking: just as Robertson prepares to leave, residents have committed to carrying this public resource forward. As someone who has watched earlier, much closer millage votes in Grand Rapids in the late 20th century, I believe part of this recent result comes from Robertson’s leadership style. I, like many others, will miss it, and I’m hopeful it lives on, because it was never about one person. It was about one person who held the door for so many others to walk through.

The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes what he has helped make possible, including many accomplishments (too many to list here) created together with the community. The larger legacy is what can keep happening without him: a child holding an artifact, a family feeling welcome, someone finding a little relief from sensory overload, and a community recognizing itself in the stories being told.

During one of our conversations from earlier this year, Dale said something I haven’t been able to shake.

“I think sometimes we almost take progress and call it success,” he says, explaining that reaching a milestone doesn’t mean we’ve solved everything. “There is always room for further growth and improvement.”

I think there’s something worth holding on to in that, especially as our city continues to change.

For nearly two decades, Dale has helped build a museum in which curiosity isn’t just welcome; it’s expected, and that expectation applies to the visitors walking through the doors and to the institution itself. Maybe that’s the greatest gift of his leadership: he’s leaving in place a museum that doesn’t pretend to have all the answers and knows why it has to keep asking questions.

The work of building a more welcoming community, much like the work of learning, is never finished. We listen. We learn. And if we’re paying attention, we change what we do with what we’ve experienced.

That’s a heritage worth carrying forward as we advance, much better informed today, towards our shared future.

Thank you, Dale Robertson, for your remarkable years of service to our city and its history, and for reminding us that community curiosity is a wonderful place to begin our journey of discovery.

Photos by Tommy Allen