Banner-FEB-2013
In This Issue:
Welcome New Staff
For Members
Focus on Ethnography
Focus on Archaeology
Social Media Campaign
Join Our Mailing List


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Visit our blog
Greetings!,

 

Happy Valentine's Day! February finds us busily working on new phases of our collections move and gallery renovation projects. Planning for exhibitions, programs, the web site and social media is underway and we have been convening focus groups of visitors, members, educators, artists, faculty and others to help us prepare for our re-launch in the fall of 2014. 

 

Please consider joining as a member or giving membership to your Valentine this year. Members enjoy the collections in person (even while the Museum is closed to the public) on our monthly behind-the-scenes member tours!

good valentine
Hand-made valentine, Tesuque Pueblo, New Mexico, collected before 1945. PAHMA 2-17079.

  

  

With warm regards,

Salvador signature  

Mari Lyn Salvador

Director 
Welcome New Museum Staff Members 

Rose Katsus and Linda Waterfield
rose photo
Rose Katsus joined the Museum as Head of Operations and Planning. She has her Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science from San Francisco State University.  Rose has approximately 22 years of University of California experience including 3 years serving as the Management Services Officer at the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley. In that role she oversaw visitor services, educational tours and programs, facilities, finances, human resources, information technology, and strategic planning. Rose is excited  to be a part of the Hearst Museum team advancing the Museum's mission.
 
 

new lindaLinda Waterfield is the Museum's new Head of Registration and also serves as adjunct faculty at John F. Kennedy University's Museum Studies program. Her prior experience includes working as a registrar for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Judah L. Magnes Museum and as a collections manager at History San Jose. Linda looks forward to supporting the Museum's 1.7 million object move and to helping ensure that the collections will be well positioned for the next century and beyond.

 
For Members

Upcoming February Event
Jessica Horowitz, Development and Interpretation Coordinator 
Luxor, Egypt. Carl Oscar Borg, artist. PAHMA 17-197, (h)122x(w)147cm.

Join or renew today as a member and enjoy behind-the-scenes access to collections during the Museum's move and gallery renovations. We hope you can join us for our next members' tour in February which will focus on the collection of paintings by American painters Joseph Henry Sharp and Carl Oscar Borg. More tour details will be emailed to members soon. 
If you would like to participate in any future member events, please consider joining today. Any gift, including membership, is 100% tax deductible. Not sure if your membership has expired? For more information, or to renew over the phone, you can reach me at 510-643-2776 or by email at [email protected]. 
Focus on the Ethnographic Collection

The Maori of New Zealand

Ira Jacknis, Research Anthropologist
Maori feather cloak.  Collected by Mrs. Peter J. Crosby, Jr., before 1949. PAHMA 11-3334, (h)60 x (w)90cm.

 

Although the Maori collection at the Hearst Museum--numbering about 200 items--is one of the smaller ones, it is an excellent representation of the culture of this Polynesian people.  The Maori, who settled in New Zealand some time before 1300, are renowned for their elaborate and decorative woodcarving, stonework, and textiles.

 

In fact, the Maori collections at Berkeley go back to the very beginnings of the university.  Around 1873, Francis L. A. Pioche, a wealthy San Francisco banker, donated a large natural history collection, which included a carved Maori staff.  Transferred to the UC Anthropology Museum in 1904, it was the first Maori object to be cataloged.  The second Maori item was a stone adz donated by Phoebe Hearst in 1901.

 

By far, however, the core of the Maori collection are the 102 items obtained from the Otago University Museum in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1929.  These were sent on exchange for a sample of Greek and Roman antiquities.  Henry Devenish Skinner, the museum's curator, had selected the Classical items in the fall of 1927, while he was in Berkeley taking graduate courses in anthropology.  Skinner, who was much influenced by American anthropologists such as Clark Wissler and Alfred Kroeber, continued to work with Edward Gifford on their mutual interest in Pacific studies.

Maori wall slab for a meeting house; detail of top half.  Collected on exchange from the Otago University Museum. PAHMA 11-2251, (h)180 x (w)60cm.

 

The Otago collection is quite diverse, consisting mostly of stone adzes, bone fish hooks, and fine wood carving.  By far the most spectacular and important items are a pair of carved panels for a meeting house.  These flat posts supported the rafters of a Maori meeting house.  They were carved around 1870 with steel tools by the Ngati Porou tribe (iwi), who live in the northeast corner of the North Island, and are noted for their woodcarving.  Skinner was proud of his contribution:  "It is a good alround collection, and the two carved slabs or pillars are exceptionally fine, worth far more than all the carving of the Maori house in the Field Museum put together."

 

Throughout the rest of the 20th century, the museum continued to fill out its Maori collection.  Between 1960 and 1990, the museum acquired some finely-woven baskets made by leading Maori weavers.


Maori "kitsch", collected by Arnold Rubin. From l-r: oil lamp, PAHMA 11-43234 (h)24.7 cm; salt shaker PAHMA 11-43233, (h)8.7 cm; and coffee mug PAHMA11-43232, (h)10 cm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Included with the museum's well-known focus on tourist art, fostered by anthropology professor Nelson Graburn, in 1984 the museum accepted five items of what was called "ethnic kitsch."  UCLA professor of art history Arnold Rubin collected a coffee mug, salt shaker, oil lamp, and plastic pendant, all made in Japan, invoking distinctive Maori decorative styles.  So, whether beautiful or ugly, the Maori collections are important documents of cultural practices and representations.

Focus on the Archaeological Collection

Little Dolls All in a Row
 
Paolo Pellegatti, Research Archaeologist &
Corri MacEwen, Project Manager-Archaeology 
Africa Dolls
Clay figurines from Mali, ca. 2000-1360 B.C. PAHMA 5-11898, (h)5cm.
American Doll
Ceramic doll head from San Francisco, ca. 1890 A.D. PAHMA 1-245517, (h)4cm.

Archaeology tells a story of peoples who are no longer around to tell it themselves. Today we live in a complex world and the lives and stories of those who came before are indeed relevant to our own present. The information gained helps answer questions about how we became who and what we are today. Through the analysis of artifacts and places archaeology explores our pasts and the origin of our diversities, commonalities, likes and dislikes.

 

Egypt Doll
Wooden doll, Tebtunis, Egypt. Collected ca. 1899 A.D. PAHMA 6-20355, (h)20cm.

When looked at within its context, ancient material culture conjures up images of men, women, elders and children who hunted, farmed, crafted, traded, played, invented and passed while the world around them was always slowly changing. The objects they left behind inform us of past lifeways and how those lifeways changed through the centuries owing to influences such as the environment, the neighbors, and people's own wants and desires.

Given their depth and sheer size the Hearst collections have limitless potential to explore those stories and lifeways through time and space. The on-going inventory effort is primarily concerned with the archaeological collections. Although they make up approximately 75% of the museum's holdings, the vast majority of objects we have exhibited in the last 40 years were ethnographic.

 

In the following months, in this newsletter and on our website, we will feature archaeological objects that rarely, if ever, have made their way to the exhibit gallery. Featured today are three objects that, despite their age, would look familiar to children everywhere and remind us that playing, whether with dolls or other toys, has been a universal desire for thousands of years. 

Social Media Campaign

Like us! Follow us! Read our blog!
Jonathan Goodrich, Associate Head of Education
 

Over the past few months the Museum has worked on developing its social media presence as a means to connecting with our visitors, supporters and friends during renovations and the collections move. This effort is gaining momentum thanks to Facebook and Twitter followers and fans that have joined us for this time of growth. We have recently doubled our number of Facebook followers, re-energized our Twitter feed and have been busily pinning on Pinterest. Our newly hired social media intern, Nicole Giglio, is working with the staff at the Museum to help us stay relevant and consistent with our campaign. Social media is the perfect platform for highlighting significant objects from our collections and demonstrating our progress with the move and renovations. In addition to social media, we have several active bloggers on staff and we invite you to access their blogs via our website.

 

Looking ahead, we will be collaborating with local chefs, bakers, and food vendors to create an e-cookbook on our web site filled with recipes inspired by cooking implements in our collection. This project was created for us by a group of graduate students in the Museum Studies program at JFK University as part of a class on museums and technology. The e-cookbook is part of a renewed commitment to working with diverse partners and communities and fostering their voices at the Museum. We are excited to share this commitment with our growing audience, so, please follow us on social media and read our blogs! Click on the links below, enjoy, and spread the word.


Like us on Facebook    Find us on Pinterest     Follow us on Twitter    Visit our blog    
 As always, you can view the objects in our collection, and those highlighted in this newsletter, using our online colletions browser: