The Science Museum of Virginia's new director, Richard Conti, once thought his life's ambition was to manage a city.

But when the opportunity arose 10 years ago, Conti, then assistant to Norfolk's city manager, took over as executive director of the city's Nauticus science center.

He changed its focus from an urban theme park to a maritime-themed science center with interactive exhibits. Attendance and earned revenue doubled.

Last year, when Walter Witschey announced he was retiring as director of the state museum on West Broad Street, he suggested that Conti might consider a move to Richmond. Conti applied and in January became the museum's third director.

He oversees a $10 million annual budget, more than half of it coming from the state, for the main museum and its Danville Science Center, the Virginia Aviation Museum in Sandston and the SciencePort, which is under development in Northern Virginia. The museum has 78 full-time employees, 1,100 volunteers and 8,000 member households.

Conti will earn $183,000 a year ($122,635 from the state and $60,365 from the Science Museum of Virginia Foundation). His salary at Nauticus was $101,000.

"Running a place like this is really diverse. This morning, I was in an inner-city school in Petersburg, watching one of our educators deliver one of our programs. Later on in the week, I'll be meeting with a potential donor. . . . This morning, we have a marketing meeting where we talk about our advertising strategies," Conti said. "It's a really diverse, cool job by any stretch. You have to tap into a lot of different skills in a job like this."

The museum's trustees hope Conti can make the facility more fun for more people. He was charged by the trustees to improve the museum's presentation and personalize the experience for the nearly 375,000 annual visitors.

Attendance at the museum and its two satellite facilities, which have 75,000 square feet of exhibit space, has dropped 29 percent in the past five years. Museums nationwide face increasing competition from other forms of entertainment.

Conti said he thinks he'll be able to increase museum attendance and better reach its statewide audience.

He'll likely have to do it without the bold action he took in Norfolk, helping to bring cruise ships and the battleship Wisconsin to Nauticus and the port city. Those two moves helped him nearly double the center's

annual attendance.

Conti said increasing attendance in Richmond will rest on "a series of a lot of little things."

"It'll be us kind of having a sharp focus on the messages we're communicating out to the public and the kind of programs we're doing."

David Cohn, the museum board of trustees chairman, said the board wants Conti to make the museum "the best possible hands-on science center system for Virginians. This includes making the visitor experience more coherent, relevant and enjoyable."

Conti's other goals, which will be reviewed by the board in June, include broadening donor support, which in the past four years has ranged from nearly $2.5 million donated in 2004 to a high of $5.5 million in 2005 and more than $2.5 million in 2007, and ensuring the museum meets the region's science education needs.

Unlike his predecessor, who is an active research scientist and holds an MBA, Conti does not have a background in the sciences. Instead, like his counterpart at the Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville and a growing number of science museum CEOs, he has business degrees.

"I came to the museum as an everyday person," he said, adding that he got a "C" in college physics. "That can be a good thing for a place like this."

Conti represents a growing trend in science museum leadership. A recent report by the Association of Science-Technology Centers found that among its members, 11 percent of current chief executives have MBAs, compared with 1 percent of their predecessors.

Meanwhile, the number of CEOs holding doctorates, typically in science or education, is 19 percent, compared with 34 percent of their predecessors.

"Now more than ever, science centers and museums . . . are relying more and more heavily on people who have a strong business background just because of economics," said Sean Smith of the museum association.

"There's probably some more receptiveness on the part of the field to look at people who may not have a hard science background and may have simply a business background or a combination of both," Smith said.

In 2005, he noted, the Maryland Science Center named a former division president of Bethlehem Steel, Van Reiner, as its president and CEO. The Inner Harbor site, with 130,000 square feet of exhibition space, has a $12 million annual budget and more than 500,000 visitors each year. According to the museum's 2006 tax forms, Reiner's annual salary was $168,257.

"That's an example of a pretty large-scale science center that's very well-respected in the field that went to someone who had that business background," Smith added.

Other museums are looking for similar leadership qualities.

The Miami Science Museum, which will build a 200,000-square-foot science and technology institution, wants its new chief operating officer to have a decade of science-center management. Its job posting on the American Association of Museums' Web site asks for a bachelor's degree in science, business management or engineering.

"Having a business degree certainly helps because a lot of what museums do resemble enterprises," Conti said. "We have retail and we've got food service and we rent the building for special events and we try to apply good acumen to how we run the place. But at the end of the day, that's not why we're here. We're a nonprofit."

Bobby Thalhimer, co-chairman of the Science Museum's director search committee, said the panel was interested in Conti because of his record in running Nauticus, which like the Science Museum is structured as a public-private partnership.

"We concluded that Rich in fact had gained a Ph.D. in museum management on the job," he said.

Conti said his business background has helped him "become the leader that I am today," someone who likes "understanding marketing and advertising and fundamental accounting."

The executive director/CEO at the state's natural history museum, Tim Gette, said Conti's business background would be valuable to the Science Museum.

"All museums, not just science museums, are facing the challenge of where do we raise funds and how do we develop museums for the future," said Gette, whose salary for running the Martinsville museum is $105,189.

The museum, which moved into a new and larger building last year, expects to more than double its attendance for 2007-08 to more than 70,000 visitors. The natural history museum's annual budget is nearly $5.2 million.

As the Science Museum moves forward in its fourth decade, Conti wants to ensure galleries capture the interest of visitors.

"The average family [visiting] out there is not thinking about physics or chemistry or mathematics. I think what we have to do is find things they do care about, and then as we pull the curtain back, we can show them what an important role that physics and chemistry and engineering and mathematics play in their everyday lives," he said.

The museum's newest gallery, the Bioscape exhibit, is a broad look at recent biological advances and an example of what he's after, Conti said.

"It's the newest, the thinking that's gone into it is good, it's got a great mix of interactivity. It certainly connected with my family in a lot of ways," Conti said.

Now he hopes to make that experience connect with other families and bring more people inside the former train station that houses the museum.

"You hate to be judged just on your numbers," said Conti, known for turning around Nauticus' numbers. But, he added, "They are important. They're a sign of a healthy museum." Contact A.J. Hostetler at (804) 649-6355 or ahostetler@timesdispatch.com.