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Greetings!,
As we enter summer, I want to take a moment to recognize the incredible efforts of our student volunteers, and to thank our departing graduates. Student volunteers provide the Museum with more than 2,000 hours of assistance each year and are central to its success. This year several of our student volunteers are moving onto internships at the Getty Research Institute, the National Portrait Gallery and to museum studies programs around the country.
Last month we reached our latest move milestone thanks to the tireless efforts of staff and volunteers. The entire African archaeological collection, comprised of over 68,154 objects, has been inventoried, re-housed, photographed, packed and moved. This collaborative effort illustrates The Hearst's commitment to the highest level of collections care and to safeguarding the public trust. I look forward to sharing more of our successes with you in the future.
With warm regards,
Mari Lyn Salvador
Director
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Community Engagement
Cal Day @ the Hearst
Jonathan Goodrich, Associate Head of Education
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The Museum joined other campus departments this past April to celebrate Cal Day--an open house for current and prospective students, their families and the general community. As part of the day's events, the Museum hosted two music and dance troupes. In the morning, Hālau o Keikiali'i of San Francisco performed beautiful traditional and modern Hawai'ian dance and music. In the afternoon, San Jose Taiko played Japanese drums and demonstrated the art form of kumidaiko (ensemble drumming).
With the galleries temporarily closed for our collections move and the renovation of our public spaces, Cal Day provides a great opportunity to engage local performing artists whose traditions are reflected in our collections. We hope to strengthen these connections as we move forward with our renovations and after we re-open.
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For Members
Member Events @ the Hearst
Jessica Horowitz, Development and Interpretation Coordinator
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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 member event in June when Ira Jacknis, the Museum's Research Anthropologist, speaks about our recently moved African Collection while we tour the facility where objects from that collection are installed. In July, members will get special access to our Native North American basket collection. More event details will be emailed to members soon!
 | | Ira Jacknis points out details of the Chilkat blanket from Alaska, PAHMA 2-28871 . |
Last month, we took members and donors into the Museum's collections facility in Emeryville to view our Native North American textiles. Participants heard from Ira Jacknis and Natasha Johnson, North American Collections Manger, about the condition, meaning and significance of our textiles from Pueblo, Navajo, Northwest Coast, and Eastern United States peoples.
If you would like to participate in 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 jessicahorowitz@berkeley.edu.
Click here to become a member!
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Focus on the Archaeological Collection
Settlement and Abandonment in the Ancient Indus Valley
Paolo Pellegatti, Research Archaeologist
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 | | Miniature pot (~5cm x 3cm) from Chanhu-daro. PAHMA 9-12208. |
In 1973 the Museum received a small figurine of a bull and this miniature pot. They date to around 2,500 B.C. and are two of six similarly small objects collected in 1935 by a U.C. linguistics professor at Chanhu-daro, Pakistan. That was also the year the ancient mound was excavated for the first time. Chanhu-daro, along with Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, is one of the urban settlements of what is known as the Indus Civilization, which flourished between modern day Pakistan and Western India during the Bronze age (3,600-1,200 B.C.). Despite all efforts, Indus texts remain unreadable, but archaeological evidence tells us that cities like Chanhu-daro were well-planned, capable of sheltering additional populations from nearby towns when needed. By the 3rd millennium B.C., its citizens enjoyed a carefully planned and laid out drainage system that served all the houses in the city. Toilets! The 1937 publication indicates that small objects were occasionally found in the ancient plumbing, but nothing of great value to the residents. Lodged in one cesspit, however, a human skull was found, prompting the researcher to suggest that the individual was evidently murdered and his head disposed in a 'hard-to-find' place.
Chanhu-daro didn't grow as big as other urban centers, yet it was home to thousands of men and women living in rather close quarters. A certain level of violence is certainly to be expected, but new research published by the National Geographic indicate that, by the 2nd millennium B.C., high numbers of individuals suffered serious injuries or death by violent means. This stands in apparent contrast with the classic Indus iconography, which lacks images of war, soldiers, or killing.
A different kind of violence, however, led many of these cities to be slowly abandoned. Flooding episodes of the Indus river caused damage to walls, streets, and other infrastructure. At least five major inundations forced the abandonment of the city for long periods of time, and the last group to settle on the mound--in 2000 B.C.--had little in common with the original Harappan population.
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Figurine of a bull (~5cm x 7cm) from Chanhu-daro. PAHMA 9-12204.
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Focus on the Ethnographic Collection
A Plains Indian Painting by Jules Tavernier
Ira Jacknis, Research Anthropologist
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This is a story of recent research to document a painting that has long been a mystery.
One of the puzzles of the Hearst Museum's collections has been the single canvas by Jules Tavernier. Donated by Phoebe Hearst in 1918, just months before her death, it came with virtually no documentation. We have no title, just a description: "framed oil painting of Plains Indian encampment during a rain." Other than the date of accession, we have just a date of 1880 for the year of collection. Because the painting is rendered in such a loose, impressionistic manner, it was impossible to know where this scene was located or the identity of the local Indians.
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A Cloud Effect, by Jules Tavernier, 1880. PAHMA 17-195.
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Jules Tavernier (1844-1889) was clearly a talented and important artist, but until now there has been very little scholarship on him. We know that he was born and trained in Paris, and emigrated to the United States in 1873. We also know that between 1873 and 1875, he worked his way across the continent, sending in illustrations for Harper's Weekly. So we have assumed that our painting was either painted during this time or was based on sketches he made then. Tavernier then divided his time between San Francisco and Monterey, where he founded the local art colony. In 1884, seeking to escape his debts, he settled in Hawaii, where he painted dramatically lit scenes of erupting volcanoes until his premature death.
In March, while showing this painting to our members, I was told that the Crocker Museum in Sacramento was planning a comprehensive Tavernier exhibit for next year. Scott A. Shields, the Crocker's chief curator, was quite excited to hear about our canvas, which he had not known. After examining a photo of the painting, Shields and his colleague, independent art historian Claudine Chalmers, were able to quickly come up with a convincing identification. Although they had a written description of the painting, they had no idea of what had become of it. So because of our fortuitous sharing of a long-hidden object, most likely never before exhibited, we now have a well-documented painting that we can share with world.
For the complete investigative story about our Tavernier painting, visit our website!
Read more about the upcoming Tavernier exhibit at the Crocker Museum.
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Professional Engagment
The Hearst @ the Society for California Archaeology's 2013 Annual Meeting
Natasha Johnson, North American Collections Manager &
Allison Lewis, Move Conservator
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Natasha Johnson: At the most recent Society for California Archaeology (SCA) annual meeting, held in Berkeley this year, there was a session dedicated to the work done with the Hearst's collections over the last ten years. The Legacy of Berkeley Archaeology through Museum Collections: Recent Research Using 'Old' Archaeological Assemblages, was co-chaired by Professor Kent Lightfoot, of UC Berkeley, and Professor Edward Luby, of San Francisco State. Ten papers were presented by current and former Cal students on various aspects of their research on objects from Alameda, Contra Costa, Lassen, Marin, Napa, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Santa Barbara and Sonoma counties. Climatological data; ecosystem change; and cultural diffusion, exchange, and continuity were all hot topics. For more information, see the symposium listing. Allison Lewis: On Thursday, March 7th, I co-taught an SCA archaeological conservation workshop hosted by the Presidio Trust's Archaeology Lab in San Francisco. The workshop covered lifting and storage methods for fragile artifacts. Through a combination of lectures, demonstrations, and a hands-on, simulated block-lifting activity, participants had the chance to learn about conservation approaches to excavating and caring for delicate archaeological objects. For more information, see the symposium listing.
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Campus Outreach
Renewed Energy: Recent Undergrads Becoming New Staff
A. Rowan Gard, Ethnography Project Manager
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May marks the tenth month of the ongoing Move Project, which is just one piece of the exciting transformation currently underway at the Hearst. An energizing step in the move process was the hiring of several recent graduates. These emerging members of the museum field bring a wealth of experiences, passions and fresh perspectives to the Project. As the Museum Director pointed out in her message at the top of this newsletter, much of what we are able to accomplish is done with the assistance of volunteers--including undergraduates from UC Berkeley, JFK University and other area institutions of higher learning. Once they graduate, many move onto higher degree programs, jobs in the anthropology field, or to other museums.
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Gráinne Hebeler, Paige Walker, and Katie Fleming smile before moving this helmet mask from West Africa. PAHMA 5-5835.
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A few, like Gráinne, Paige, and Katie are welcomed back to the Hearst as regular employees, and begin managing volunteers themselves. Fostering the next generation of anthropologists and members of the museum field is very important to the Hearst, and we are dedicated to providing professional opportunities for students and recent graduates.
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View our collections online!
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As always, you can view the objects in our collection, and those highlighted in this newsletter, using our online collections browser:
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