WASHINGTON – The National Park Service announced on April 14 its selection of Ronald C. Wilson as chief curator to lead the Park Museum Management Program. The cultural-resource program is one of five providing national program-support functions for park resources and advising the associate director for Cultural Resources in Washington, D.C. As chief curator, Wilson now provides national leadership for development and coordination of service-wide plans, policies, standards and procedures for managing National Park Service museum collections. He has responsibility for overseeing technical assistance, publications and professional development pertaining to park museum collections. In addition, he oversees the maintenance of a service-wide catalog and other statistics on the National Park Service’s more than 123 million museum items. Wilson began his new position on May 11, 2008.

Wilson was formerly the head of the Department of Interior’s Museum Program, a position he held since 1991. In that capacity he led the museum program’s strategic-planning efforts in 10 Interior bureaus and offices and developed agency-wide museum training programs. Wilson worked for National Park Service from 1991 to 1996, during which time the Interior Museum Program was housed within the Service’s museum program. Prior to that he held management positions in several public and university museums in the southeast, midwest and mid-Atlantic states. Wilson is a strong generalist with more than 30 years of professional museum experience. He holds a bachelor’s degree in zoology and a master’s degree in environmental and evolutionary biology, both from the University of Kentucky. A national leader in museum management, he brings to the park’s museum-management program a wealth of experience in successfully building and managing a large, complex program.

"We are very pleased that Ron Wilson is returning to the Washington, D.C., office of the National Park Service," said Janet Snyder Matthews, associate director, Cultural Resources.  "We look forward to working with him to strengthen stewardship and access to park museum resources."

Wilson's formal association with the National Park Service began while he was in college at the University of Kentucky.  He joined Cave Research Foundation projects in Mammoth Cave National Park, where he participated in projects involving cave archeology, biology, and Pleistocene vertebrate paleontology. He later served as president of the foundation, coordinating foundation research programs at Mammoth Cave, Carlsbad Caverns, Sequoia-Kings Canyon and Lava Beds.