Transcript
Jennifer Berglund 00:04
Welcome to HMSC Connects!, where we go behind the scenes of four Harvard museums to explore the connections between us, our big, beautiful world, and even what lies beyond. My name is Jennifer Berglund, part of the Exhibits team here at the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, and I’ll be your host. HMSC is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, and wow! I’ve been a part of HMSC since its first year, so take it for me when I say that it all went by in a flash. A lot has changed over those years. We’ve gone from growing our identity within the Harvard community to constructing and cultivating Harvard’s front porch. It’s been quite the journey, but we’ve been guided with grace by two Executive Directors. First, Jane Pickering, who is now the William and Muriel Seabury Howells Director of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, one of our partner museums at Harvard. And now, Brenda Tindal, who recently took on a new role as Chief Campus Curator for Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Today, I’m reflecting with them on HMSC’s first glorious decade, and imagining how we grow from here. Here they are. Jane Pickering and Brenda Tindal, welcome to the show.
Jane Pickering 01:38
Thanks for having us. Delighted to be here.
Brenda Tindal 01:40
Indeed, I share Jane’s sentiments. I’m delighted to be part of today’s discussion.
Jennifer Berglund 01:45
Jane, you were the founding director of HMSC, coming from Yale. What was exciting to you about the idea of HMSC?
Jane Pickering 02:00
I have to say, I had heard sort of through the grapevine a little bit that Harvard had been thinking about how to move forward with the museums there, and I was familiar with some of them already and they were thinking about a new model and that always interests me, you know, sort of thinking about how museums fit within the university environment, and how we can really support the mission of being front facing part of the university and really thinking about how museums can contribute to the mission of the university and also do good things. So I was interested, and then I saw the position advertised and I was like, “Whoa, that’s really cool.” So I was very uncool, and just sort of called up almost immediately and said, “Hey, I’m really interested in this.” I didn’t even wait for anyone to contact me or anything. I just like right in there, and I think why I was excited was really this idea of bringing the museums together. So HMSC is sort of a partnership between the museums that are part of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the University, and the idea of bringing these museums together whilst retaining their individual identities and strengths of them as individual museums, but also saying, “How can we make it more than a sum of its parts, particularly with a focus on the public facing part?” So I began as a curator, but I’ve done a lot of work in exhibitions in informal science education, and sort of community building, community programs with teens. So anyway, I’ve done a lot of that public facing work, and this felt like an opportunity to work across disciplines across museums to really bring the museum’s together and make them more. That I think, was what was exciting to me, and also, as proved to be the case, to have the opportunity to meet with faculty and students and others from different areas of the university and to bring them together and get to hang out with many different people. So I had this sort of personal interest and excitement, and then what I thought was a really good idea. I mean, it was a sort of interesting model, there isn’t really a comparison. I mean, I spent a lot of time particularly at the beginning, trying to work out how was what we were doing with HMSC, you know, what can we learn from other universities with many museums, and they sort of brought together and it was always more of a sort of consortium model. You know, sort of museums coming together to do marketing, “Come see all the museums at that this that and the other universities.”
Jennifer Berglund 04:47
Right.
Jane Pickering 04:47
But I felt like it hadn’t really gone, which isn’t to mean that those things aren’t good, it’s just that we were looking at a completely different model that was really sort of having a deep relationship, a deep partnership around many different areas of the museum’s activity. And then of course, setting up something new is always exciting. So I felt like the building blocks were all there, there was a lot of support, and still is from the university, and then I remember coming in, and there were so many great programs right there. And so we were really building off something that was pretty good to start with, to be honest.
Jennifer Berglund 05:27
You’re really taking four different museums that have operated independently for many years, and you’re bringing them all together and building a model that did not exist before. I mean, that’s a huge challenge. The first few years are probably spent just figuring out “Oh, well, what does that look like? Where can we get everybody to agree?” What were some of the challenges and successes in those first few years?
Jane Pickering 05:54
There’s always the administrative challenge, right, anytime you’re part of a large university. And the very first Admin Director, who was wonderful person, Sue Shefte. She was the first HMSC employee, so she was sort of setting herself up within HMSC. So some of that, just like how do you set something up in a big university, and all the finance and the HR and all that. And then the second person was Polly, who was the Director of Education with Peabody, who’s still at HMSC, and she was number two, so Sue got to practice on her. And then I was number three. It was sort of funny doing all that onboarding stuff within the Harvard administration. So there were those sorts of things, and then we had to have and this is sort of behind the scenes, but important issues, like how was the finances gonna work? Which is always a challenge when you have many different partners coming together, and how do you work that out in a way that is supporting the sort of individual museums and their sort of needs and wants for their public programs, whilst at the same time sort of, you know, enabling HMSC to do things to support that. So there was that background stuff, which was certainly challenging. I think, probably the main challenge, certainly, at the beginning, was just trying to sort of shape and talk about what HMSC was, and also what it wasn’t. You know, I think at the beginning, especially there was that sense of where we sort of suddenly in charge of everything. I always say, in a university, you’re not actually in charge of anything. We’re coming in as a partnership to work together to achieve important things, but sort of explaining that I spent a lot of time just really going round everywhere, saying, “Here’s what I think we’re going to do,” and listening and talking about what I thought we could do. That was always a challenge, because it’s a lot of people. I mean, I’m sure Brenda would agree. When you’re working with so many museums, and it’s such a big institution, there’s a lot of people, and people didn’t know what it was, and we had to build from the ground up, right? So I remember poor old and I guess I shouldn’t keep name checking people, but Tim Letteney who’s still at HMSC, and talking with him, and he was just sort of coming in, he had been working with HMANE, as it’s now called the Harvard Museum in the Ancient Near East, and so looking at him and saying, “You’re sort of like a tech web person, and I just realized HMSC needs a website, like, immediately.” And so, you know, talking with Harvard web publishing, and they were saying, “Well, we’re going to try this new thing out.” And I’m like, “Hey, are we the guinea pig for you, and can you do it in three months?” With Tim, you know, sitting in these meetings, we need a website now, because otherwise nobody knows what this is, and, and you know, the sort of logo and just trying to build it up as an entity while still respecting this sort of need, and the importance of the individual museums and their lengthy history and all the things that go along with that. So trying to sort of do them at the same time to really say, “Yes, this is something that’s going to make more of what we are collectively, rather than somehow taking away or taking over,” or I think that was certainly a challenge at the beginning. And some of that is just as time goes by, right? I remember with Day of the Dead, coming in, and the Day of the Dead celebration at the Peabody, which was so successful and so amazing, and just a real model for a sort of community driven, both Mexican community in the greater Boston area, the university, it was involving classes. So these amazing programs that HMSC was now responsible for working with the Peabody and thinking, “Oh, gosh, let’s not screw that up.” Then you have a “What can we do that’s new?” You know what…
Jennifer Berglund 09:59
Yeah,
Jane Pickering 09:59
…what can we do that really leverages and shows people what’s important about HMSC, and what we can do collectively. And I was thinking about the moment when I thought, “Ah, yes, I think we’re sort of getting there,” and the moment when I was really thinking, “Ah yeah,” I remember it very clearly, because it was Summer Solstice, which is still going too, and it was the first Summer Solstice. And this sort of brewed up as an idea about doing something with all the museums, and so we collectively said, and again, it was a lot of “Okay, and we need to do it in three months.” So for some staff, it was sort of a “We got to do this because we got to do something big here. And I’m really sorry. And I know we’ve only got three months, but let’s go for it” sort of thing and doing Summer Solstice, which sort of the idea of free admission for the museum’s but also doing something else, and so we were like, “Well, let’s do something outside because it’s June.” And one of the things that it came from was at the time the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments was doing an exhibit on time, and so that’s where we were thinking about time, seasonality, then through that I discovered there’s astronomical time, and there’s regular time that we all think of and so there we were on the Science Plaza, and now it was an interesting thing, actually because we were so worried that people might not come that we thought, “Let’s do the outdoor stuff on the plaza near the Science Center on the campus, that’s just right off the yard, because everybody’s going through there. So even if people haven’t heard about it, it’s sort of a throughway, so people will come and enjoy it and then we can say, “Hey, go to the museums.” Well, that proved to be completely unnecessary, because we were packed from the get go. But it was such fun. I remember being on the Science Plaza and we had the local telescope society had got their telescopes out so we could talk, could look at the sky, what’s going on in the Science Center. And then I remember someone had very kindly thought about my own English heritage, and there were Maypole dances. Someone said, “Well, let’s do a countdown.” And I remember they said, “Well, you’re the director, you should do the countdown.” So we were doing a countdown to the moment that the sun officially set according to the regular time that all of us use, and just standing there chatting like I’m doing the mic and then doing the countdown, and there were all these little kids who were getting really excited. I was like, “Oh, let’s bring the kids up.” So we brought the kids up, and they all came and they were doing the you know, “10, 9, 8, 7.” And I just thought, “Wow, this is cool,” and knowing that there were hundreds of people in the museums and that was cool, and that was the moment where I thought this was something that no individual museum could have done by itself. The content was across the museums, the expertise that was coming in from the different curatorial and faculty and we had students involved, and it was wonderful. So that for me, I mean, it was a little early, and I was still going around probably for a couple of years sort of saying “Here’s what HMSC is,” but it really felt like the moment that it really began. I would have imagined it all felt possible. What a great eureka moment. It was. it was good.
Jennifer Berglund 13:21
Jane took over as Executive Director at the Peabody Museum, and then the pandemic hit, and everything changed completely. And then, of course, Brenda, you come in right smack in the middle of the pandemic, which I’m sure was so much fun. And you actually celebrated your first Solstice, virtually. So this amazing festival that Jane was describing, this eureka moment that she had when she really realized this was going to work, you celebrated yours on the computer.
Brenda Tindal 13:55
What was so interesting about it is not only am I the new Executive Director, I’m meeting my staff in a remote capacity, I’m being exposed to a plethora of programming as a virtual experience, and while that probably isn’t the most ideal way to be introduced to your sort of new community, what it allowed me to do was to really hone in on the incredibly talented staff, who were facilitating programs in a virtual capacity, who were teaching in this virtual capacity, and who were bringing new life into our programming as a virtual experience. It wasn’t quite the festive sort of experience that Jane described, but I could totally see the light that is Summer Solstice, even in that virtual capacity. It also was a great opportunity to begin to understand the broad interests of our visitors who were also tuning in virtually. It just sets the excitement to at minimum half some sort of conduit through which it’s still engaged with the museums, and in some ways, what I feel is particularly important is that the pandemic encouraged a kind of creativity that we may not have tapped into. And so I, again, while it wasn’t the most ideal circumstances, I felt like there wasn’t a poverty of imagination in the way in which our staff continued to leverage the mission of HMSC, and really sort of redefining what it meant to be public serving and visitor facing in this new sort of virtual ecosystem that everyone was utilizing to maintain communication and to continue engagement. It was just an exciting moment to see the museums really thriving against the backdrop of, you know, this really challenging epoch.
Jennifer Berglund 15:52
In that way you’ve described this as being the pandemic is for HMSC being an inflection point. Coming in, during the pandemic, this time of change for the whole world, but particularly HMSC, but it’s allowed you to see HMSC and the talent within in a new light. Coming out of the pandemic, what did that experience teach you about moving HMSC forward?
Brenda Tindal 16:21
Wow. You know, it’s interesting, because my first remit really as Executive Director was to reopen the museums. And I literally was at the front door when our first visitors returned, if you will. What I learned immediately is that people love our research museums. They love Natural History, they love the Peabody, they love the sense of awe that you experience on site. And so while what was really exciting for me was I literally got to shake hands with faculty and members of the Harvard community, and see intergenerational groups, hearing children in the galleries.
Jane Pickering 17:02
Boy, that was amazing. Yeah.
Brenda Tindal 17:04
It was just…
Jane Pickering 17:06
So exciting.
Brenda Tindal 17:07
…it was an emotional moment, because for me, that was really my first time being around the public after being in social isolation for nearly two years. So my introduction to the Harvard community, and to our visitors and to our staff in this sort of physical and in person space was a warm hug. And it was sort of my emergence, in some ways from social isolation. I’ve been working on a new museum that is opening, and so I was constantly by myself. So it was just amazing, and then one of the things that we did, which I have to share here, because it really does speak to the important role that HMSC plays in the Harvard community. Actually, the first program that we had on site was a orientation event for First Year Students. And technically, because Second Year Students had experience their first year really away from campus, we actually had First and Second Year Students come to the museum, and you could just hear our building came alive. And those students were descending, if you will, into our galleries and on site, and literally I could just feel the excitement of the students to actually be proximate to the campus, and just the joy of being around other students. To see that it reminds you of why we do what we do. It reminds me of the utility and the virtues of being able to be part of a museum community that is also part of an academic enterprise, like Harvard. It was just so exciting for us to welcome those First and Second Year Students back to campus, and the museum was an important depot for them to gather, for them to engage with each other, but also engage with, you know, the wonders of our incredible institution. It only served to make me even more excited about the possibilities.
Jane Pickering 19:02
I’m struck with what you’re saying, Brenda, about there being no poverty of imagination around the digital programs, and I think, for so long, we had always thought about museums as being places, right? There was a lot of talk about the importance of museums being in a physical space, real items, you know, sort of reality, and that had always been what we said. And then we discovered, actually, that wasn’t the case, and there were, as you said, there were so many exciting things we could do. And now we’re in a situation where we get it was amazing when people started coming in the galleries. I mean, it really felt “Oh, yeah.” You know, the first time that I had a group of school kids outside my window, which is one of those things that as a museum person, that’s really exciting when you hear you know, the chatter of kids. It was like, “Oh, this is so great.”
Jennifer Berglund 19:58
Yeah.
Jane Pickering 19:58
But at the same time because of the work that had been done, we’ve also been able to develop other areas that we hadn’t done in the past, so yeah. But there was that moment. I agree with you, Brenda, it was that moment when people really started coming back was just magical. Yeah.
Jennifer Berglund 20:16
Yeah.
Brenda Tindal 20:16
Absolutely, and there’s still a real appetite for continuing to engage in both remote and in person ways, and so really continuing the good work that we did during the pandemic of offering a menu of options for those that would prefer to join us remotely and even for a much more global audience. We saw that part of our visitor base, if you will, grow immensely. So we’re excited to still offer virtual programs, but there is something, you know, to Jane’s point, there is something about museums are just inherently public facing. They are, what I like to call incubators of new learning and engagement, and some of that just can’t necessarily be convened in a remote capacity. There’s something really special about being able to do that work in our galleries, to use our campus as a space to engage with the broader community. It’s a pretty phenomenal time.
Jennifer Berglund 21:14
I think I bring this up every single time we talk Brenda, but I just love it how you refer to the museums as the front porch of Harvard. This is an entry point where the public can see what goes on inside and…
Brenda Tindal 21:31
Absolutely.
Jennifer Berglund 21:31
…a place where Harvard welcomes the rest of the world.
Brenda Tindal 21:35
Absolutely, and frankly, college campuses, generally Harvard and all of its other peer institutions are inherently adult spaces, right. They are inherently for students, and for faculty and staff, and the museums really serve as this incredible conduit through which we engage with an intergenerational audience. So when we hear the pitter patter of young people in our galleries, it’s actually so refreshing to see that because there’s a way in which our world can become a bit of a bubble, and it’s in those moments where you feel very connected to a much broader community of people. So I always enjoy being in our galleries because I get to see young people. I get to see them asking new questions about themselves, and about the things that they encounter in our museums, and just feel really proud to be part of both the formal and an informal learning environment that can indeed be the front porch and can indeed be a place to convene courageous inquiry and thoughtful engagement with our collections.
Jennifer Berglund 22:43
Now, Jane, as the Director of the Peabody, one of our partner museums, tell me a bit about what you feel the importance of the individual museums, the HMSC Peabody, Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, and their relationship with HMSC?
Jane Pickering 23:04
The individual museums are obviously starting from this content piece, right, and so collections, but also the staff, the faculty, the students, the communities that those staff and faculty and students work with, and bringing that voice. I think where HMSC is so important is bringing those activities and those voices to the public, and providing that learning together. People really love to share their work, and HMSC enables the museums to share their work in a much broader, wider way, and also to have the support of people who are professionals in those areas. So, you know, we’ve recently opened a couple of exhibitions at the Peabody in our permanent Encounters in the Americas Gallery, and also a recent show by Zhang Xiao, who’s one of our Gardener Fellows, so if you take, for example, the Gardener Fellowship in Photography that the Peabody awards every year, it’s a very prestigious photography award, and so with HMSC, we’re able to put together an exhibition and associated programming in a way that just wouldn’t be possible for the Peabody by itself, and to bring a much wider audience. And that’s exciting for the museums I think, is to have those opportunities, and then, of course, the museums are involved in student learning for Harvard students, and we find, and I know HMSC probably finds that students are really hungry to be able to communicate their work, to learn how to do that,and therefore there’s the expertise available to learn. How do you go about engaging people with your research and your scholarship? How do you explain things or talk with people? What can you learn from the community to help you with your own research? So it’s not sort of like a one way street here. It’s a two way street. So the students are learning. So I think those are the sorts of areas where HMSC and what it’s doing is so important for the individual museums.
Jennifer Berglund 25:27
From the HMSC perspective, how do you see this interchange between the individual museums and HMSC?
Brenda Tindal 25:37
I see HMSC as being a critical thought partner, right. And again, if we’re using an equity lens to imagine our work, I think we are so fortunate. HMSC and our broader community are so fortunate to have such brilliant and thoughtful scholars and practitioners leveraging our collections and leveraging their research to help tell very important stories. But because we have such a intergenerational audience, I see HMSC as being really important thought partners and helping our research museums tell their stories in a way that translates to a much broader audience. So in that regard, I think from an exhibition’s vantage point, we bring in the expertise to help to communicate those narratives in a way or those stories or those topics in a way that is creative and thoughtfully curated, right. But on the other hand, programming is such an important part of what we do, and so being able to create a platform for our faculty, curators, and for our research museum directors, and for external scholars, and creatives as well, to me, it’s such a deeply important part of the relationship that HMSC has with our research museum communities. And then the other thing is, I think there’s something to be said about how HMSC, the very sort of conceptual idea of HMSC is to bring those museums together. And in doing so, what we do is create this inherently, at times interdisciplinary, at times transdisciplinary, and most of the time multidisciplinary perspective. Transdisciplinary really assumes that the merger of disciplines are strategic and seamless. There’s a seamlessness in merging disciplines. Multidisciplinary speaks to a diversity of disciplines. Interdisciplinary is about bringing those disciplines into conversation with one another. And so if there were a hierarchy of disciplinary, it would be multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary. And I think because we’re so committed to ensuring that our research museums have a very distinctive perspective, I would say we do our best work as a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary space. And when we do that, I think there’s new learning that happens there. You know, the idea of putting art, for instance, into conversation with science, or, you know, thinking about culture from a variety of vantage points, and to me, that’s where, I think, we really engaged in the important work of discovery; that we help people who might be a cult follower of Natural History, fully appreciate the exhibitions and the work happening at the Peabody and vice versa, right. And so part of what I’ve enjoyed so much is to really think about creative ways to ensure our visitors experience the full sort of footprint of our research museum community, wanting to encourage those that might have just come to visit Natural History, go over to the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, go over to the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, go over to the Peabody. Because to me, that is the heart of HMSC is really being able to assure our visitors are able to engage with the breadth of this amazing complex of museums
Jane Pickering 28:54
Yeah, and I think of things like the Hear Me Out project, which I think was initially definitely received of working with communities in places like Chelsea and providing those opportunities for Hispanic youth in those communities to engage with their own culture, but then sort of slightly having a Peabody lens towards it, and then seeing that expanded into Natural History and thinking of culture and connection to community, and not just the sort of classic idea of how you engage with your culture, but really thinking more broadly. And so it’s been really great to see a program like that and how that developed and working with the different staff and different disciplines, but providing an incredible opportunity for the youth that are involved in their families and the wider community.
Brenda Tindal 29:47
Thank you so much, Jane, for saying that because one of the things that, to me, is so important is that our work has a mobility about it, right? I mean, there are things that we can do inside of the museum, but I think when we think about a program, like Hear Me Out, that is the work of being a museum without walls. It’s a museum that can be in transit and can go to communities and be in communion with communities, and that there’s a shared experience, right, where we have students coming into the galleries and bringing their particular vantage point to that space and helping us reimagine, “How can this space be more team friendly? And what ways can we, you know, exercise a bit more language? How can we ensure that there aren’t language barriers, for instance? What does it mean to have bilingual exhibitions, for instance, that might be in Spanish and English? Those students help us think about those things in a very strategic way, and so Hear Me Out was an opportunity to acknowledge and leverage the knowledge production that comes from community, that comes from young people. And I so appreciated that program in creating space for brilliant teenagers to think through the work of our museums, and it was inherently interdisciplinary. The work that they did went across our complex. Fascinating and deeply impactful project for sure.
Jennifer Berglund 29:47
Yeah. We’ve opened this front door, and we have more of the public coming into the museum and participating in the museum. What potential do you see for allowing this greater access to influence what happens inside of not just HMSC and the partner museums but in the university as a whole?
Jane Pickering 31:40
This is from the very beginning of HMSC, was I thought one of the maybe intended, maybe not, I have no idea, was the sort of raising of the profile of the museums within the university, and within FAS. Obviously, these six museums are all part of FAS, but sort of this feeling within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences with the then dean, it sort of raised the profile, right, because people sort of knew some of the museums, sort of didn’t know others, and suddenly, all of them were being brought forward. And I remember one thing relatively early on was when there’s always that sense in the University of, “Well, we’ve got these museums, but what are they really doing? And are they really central to the mission of the university?” And of course, those of us in museums were like, “Duh, of course we are!” But I remember one of the things in university museums, people are always like, “Well, how much do they get used by the students?” And people were always like, “Well, I don’t know how many students really use these museums.” And I thought, “Let’s find out.” Questionnaire that all Harvard seniors get before they leave, it’s called the Senior Survey, they ask questions for all the seniors and there’s like a 96 response rate. And so I said, “Can we get some questions about the museums in this and let’s treat the museums as museums. We’re not going to say how many people went into the Harvard Museum of History? How many people do classes at the Peabody. Let’s just do them all.” I even included the Harvard Art Museums, because even though they’re not part of FAS, they’re still our museums, right? So now it’s just look collectively, what are museums collectively contributing to the university. And it’s huge. I mean, no one believed me. We had to do the survey twice before people believed me. There’s something like 89% of Harvard undergraduates interact with one of the museums at some point in their four year educational journey at Harvard. I mean, we also did subsets of like, “How many students bring their parents to the Glass Flowers,” or whatever. So there was all that as well, and of course, they weren’t quite as high. But if you looked at the contribution of the museums overall, it’s like 89%. And it’s because…
Jennifer Berglund 34:02
That’s huge.
Jane Pickering 34:02
…there are science students, the Organismic and Evolutionary Biology classes, there are students from all over FAS coming into the Peabody during many different classes. And so, when you added it all up, it was huge, and nobody had really thought about that. And so, I think that was something that just this whole idea of the museums as a community within the university, I think HMSC helped build that, and I think it began to really show how the museums were contributing inside Harvard. But really, what was the contribution, both to this sort of classroom, educational, formal part, but also we looked at, you know, how many students were engaged outside the classroom, and that’s a huge percentage, too. So we’re contributing in a way that is very special because the museums at the University are very special. So that was something that I saw a little bit of a change in terms of recognition of the museums, along with the libraries and along with other places. So that’s what I saw at the beginning, I think, but I’m sure Brenda has other stories about this, and experiences, too.
Brenda Tindal 34:18
No, I think you’ve captured it precisely. While there is something inherently public facing about the work that we do at museums, I always say that HMSC in our research museum partners contribute to the research teaching and public serving mission. And so I think the two are indelibly connected, right? I think there’s something indelible about research and teaching, and being able to be of service, and be an informal and formal learning space. And I would even argue that the museums are important sites for applied learning, and so we talked a little bit about Hear Me Out. We didn’t want the teen participants to simply engage with the museums as this sort of cabinet of curiosity. We really wanted them to activate them as curators, and so they were contributing to the visitor experience through their work in Hear Me Out. And the same could be said about other undergraduate students and graduate students who often support the work of our faculty curators in developing exhibitions. And so I see it as an opportunity for those really interested in applied history or applied museology. I feel like the museums are important training grounds for those that wish to engage with the public writ large. I mean, we talk about science communication quite a bit. I feel like that’s such a critical part of not only our remit, but that’s part of the virtue of our museums is helping to communicate sometimes very complex ideas and topics, communicating them in a way that resonates with a broad audience. And sometimes very difficult topics. I know that probably resonates with you, Jane, at the Peabody. I think we are still in the process of learning how best to communicate that. And that kind of involves a little bit of a conversation between the museums and the public. We’re all learning how to have those dialogues, and I think the lesson that we’re all learning is that those conversations can’t just originate from within. We have to have the conversations outside of the university and bring different perspectives in. Absolutely,
Jane Pickering 37:37
Absolutely, and I think as the Peabody has thought more about what does it mean to be an ethical steward of the collections in our care, the sort of cultural items, ancestral remains, for example. Our work with HMSC is so important, too, because that work internally for HMSC is building our own connections and collaborations and really listening to communities. To go back to Brenda, who’s been so amazing in this regard as a thought partnership around what does that mean, and what can the museum do, and what can’t we do, given the legacy of the history of the Peabody, in particular, these issues are so complicated, and having people that can really work with HMSC, working with us to build some of those connections in a way, particularly I would say, locally and with diaspora communities, for example, in our area, and really helping us to build those relationships that can help with our work, which is so important. I mean, there is no ethical stewardship without working with communities, listening, privileging their viewpoints, thinking about what it means in anthropology museums today. So having HMSC working with us on those efforts is so important.
Jennifer Berglund 39:13
Brenda, I want to talk about this new role of yours. A new role has been created for you and for the University as Campus Curator, which very sadly means that you’re going to be leaving the role.
Jane Pickering 39:28
Yes, yes, very sad.
Jennifer Berglund 39:30
We are devastated, leaving your role as executive director of HMSC. So that brings us to yet another inflection point in our trajectory. Where have you taken us and where do you see us going from here as you’re leaving?
Brenda Tindal 39:44
Interesting that you asked that question because I’ve been thinking a lot about that, in part because yesterday was my two year anniversary at Harvard. I certainly feel like I owe a tremendous debt to Jane who built such a sturdy foundation for me to inherit, if you will, upon arriving here, and so I want to say thank you to her. But she’s been amazing though partner and I would even say I call her a friend because the work that we are charged with is so deeply important. It requires a authentic and trusting relationship. I share that to sort of say, I feel like I’ve built a family at HMSC. The staff, our faculty, our faculty curators, and research museum directors are now part of my family, my intellectual family, and so I don’t see my departure from my role as Executive Director as me leaving. In fact, I feel like I’m able to advocate for the important work happening in the museums in a different capacity in my role as Chief Campus Curator, but I also see the work of our museums and sort of the clarion call to sort of refine or even revitalize our visual culture and our historical interpretive ecology as being related in so many important ways. My role as Chief Campus Curator essentially means I have sort of programmatic oversight of the curation of our campus, and that includes roughly 11 million square feet of structured space, and nearly 300 multipurpose buildings, by multipurpose I mean, some are residential spaces, some are academic spaces, some are administrative spaces. And they have, of course, the FAS community and the FAS campus includes our museums. So I see the work that I’ll be moving into as being an extension of the incredible relationships and discourses that I’ve been engaged in at the museums for the past two years. There’s so many cross institutional committees that I’m working with that are centered on our museums in a particular way, so I will contribute to our museum community in my role as Chief Campus Curator. I will continue to be, I hope, a valued partner and collaborator as we look ahead. But it’s a very exciting time to be at Harvard, where again, there’s a real clear interest in thinking about our history, thinking about how we connect to the various constituents and visitors to our campus. I’m really excited about what it means to sort of ask those kinds of questions. And also pair that sort of inquiry with action, right. Really thinking about how we better leverage our collections, how we better tell the stories of our institution that are more diverse than the ones that we currently have on display, if you will, but most importantly, how people feel on campus. There is something incredibly prestigious about being America’s oldest university. And we all know that the reputation is tremendous. I mean, Harvard is like really the citadel, if you will, of academic prowess and intellectual prowess. But we want people to experience this campus in a way that feels inviting, in a way that feels like they’re not disconnected from the heritage that is on this campus, and sometimes I think there are opportunities to sort of engage with this history, but there might not be a label to describe what that art is, or how do we ensure that we’re thinking about how we communicate to students who live on campus, who are proximate to this campus. I see our campus as the most voluminous text that our students, that our staff, that our faculty will be fortunate enough to read. And so the opportunity to make our campus more legible, to tell more diverse stories, to really steward and support our incredible collections through creative processes, and really to work collaboratively with our broad community. That’s when I see my work being and frankly, that is the work of the museums. We work collaboratively, right? We help to, you know, leverage collections to tell thoughtful stories and to raise the profile of, you know, not only our faculty and our collections, but the profile of the intellectual experience. We do that in museums, and I see our campus being now open to really thinking about that in a different way as well. So it’s such an exciting time, to say the least.
Jane Pickering 44:31
I would agree. I mean, one of the things that I think is important and I think the university is doing is really thinking about the history and how those legacies are sort of embedded in in ways that if we’re not talking with others, and people within our own community whose voices have not traditionally always been heard, to really achieve what Brenda’s talking about, but I think there is really, I see a willingness, a commitment from the very highest levels to do that work. It’s particularly necessary for the Peabody, thinking about the work, but it’s actually necessary for the entire university. And so it’s something that I think is really important. But also, I think there is that willingness and commitment to do it from everyone. You know, people sometimes ask that, particularly around the Peabody and the collections that we’re caring for, like people really understanding that ancestors don’t belong in a museum. And you hear people, I mean, not just me, but others in many different areas saying, “Yeah, yeah, we really do.”
Jennifer Berglund 45:45
Yeah.
Jane Pickering 45:45
And we know we need to act, and we need to show that we understand that, understand it and show we understand it and move forward based on that understanding. And I see that across the university and other places. And I think that’s one of the things I know Brenda is going to really be working on and delivering as the Chief Campus Curator, because our built environment and what people walk past every day, I mean, we know because as I think I mentioned before, we often think museums are spaces, right? They’re physical spaces where things take place, and so the idea of where you’re standing, where you are is so important. But that’s true for everywhere, not just inside our museums, so.
Brenda Tindal 46:27
Absolutely, and I would even say, you know, what gives me such hope about this clarion call to reimagine and to reframe and really create a sort of interpretive lens that is diverse is that this is both an act of intervention in our sort of more pedestrian spaces where, you know, it’s public facing. It is the things that we walk past every day in our sort of built environment in our sort of inherently public spaces right on campus. But I’m so excited that this is not just the exterior of public facing, the three priority spaces that are part of the FAS Visual Culture and Signage Taskforce Report. There are three places on campus that have been prioritized to begin this sort of reimagining of our visual culture within the FAS and that’s Lehman Hall, Annenberg Hall, as well as the faculty room. And these are inherently interior spaces. So Annenberg is really a student facing space. It’s one of our dining halls. It’s where Sanders Theater is located, as well, but I would say probably one of the most iconic spaces and important venues for undergraduate students. Lehman Hall is a graduate student facing facility. It’s sort of the student center for graduate students. Then the faculty room is really over in University Hall. It is where faculty council meetings and faculty meetings are held. So these are very interior facing and that we’ve prioritized not just the spaces that are facing our publics. I’m using that in plural. But the spaces that we use as stakeholders internal to Harvard, that there is a clarion call to also rethink and refine and reframe visual culture in those spaces as well. And I’m just excited about what that means for our internal culture, and how that will translate 10 years from now, 20 years from now. It’s just really exciting to know that this is something that will influence what our community feels and looks like in 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now, and that’s exciting. Very exciting.
Jennifer Berglund 48:41
What do you think it means to be future facing? And how do you see HMSC and the institutions we serve representing the Harvard of the future?
Brenda Tindal 48:52
You know, I think that’s such a deeply important question. And when I think about what it means to be future facing, for me, that is about courageous inquiry. That is about a willingness to ask questions that we haven’t asked ourselves before. It is a willingness to engage in dialogue with not only our sort of academic community, but with the broader public. It is, to me, about not simply being, in terms of museums, being a place where people can come to look, but being a place where people can come to understand. I personally see museums as these incubators of new learning of courageous inquiry, of a hub for civic engagement, for instance. I think that that is the role that museums play in the communities that they serve, and so if I think about what that means for the future, it means that not only will museums serve as spaces that mitigate that town gown, dynamic that all hallways exists in a university community, but they will be not only a front porch but a entry point to the rest of our campus. That people won’t just simply stop at the museums, they will go from the museums to the campus and feel welcomed in those spaces and feel like they’re also part of this community. And so for me, that’s what it means to be future facing. That is the work that is currently underway. I see that as being a thread and ethical stewardship. I see that as being a thread and community engagement. I see that as being a thread in reimagining our visual culture. It is about creating a campus experience or a museum experience that welcomes all. That’s the future.
Jane Pickering 50:43
Yeah, I agree. That’s what we’re aiming for. I really love, Brenda, the way you talk about asking questions, and that courageous inquiry that I hope that HMSC is, and I believe will continue to ask those questions and help and encourage the museums individually to be asking and thinking about those questions at the same time. And I think it’s because of HMSC really, that that sort of public focus, community focus that we all need, and we have, but really is so baked into the DNA of the institution, that that’s the role. They encourage us all to think about that, and not just the museums. I think what Brenda’s talking about, which is really across the university, and having those welcoming, inclusive spaces that feels to me like the future. And I hope that that’s what the museums will be contributing.
Brenda Tindal 50:55
I just want to extend my gratitude, again, to Jane and her leadership at HMSC really created a pathway for me to join this community as a museum practitioner, and as a thought partner, and I feel immense debt and gratitude to her but also, her important and brave leadership at Peabody has been inspirational to me. I feel so, so excited about where we’re headed, and because we have leaders and thought partners like Jane, in the HMSC ecosystem, in our research museum community, I feel even more affirmed in the work and in the progress that will be made as we look ahead. So Jane, thank you so much for all that you’ve done to build HMSC, but also the many ways that you’ve informed the research museum community and continue to define the trajectory of the Peabody. Really grateful.
Jane Pickering 52:45
Well, Brenda, what can I say other than right back at you? You know, Dean gay asked me to make this change. It was like, “Well, at least I’ll still be there at HMSC, right. I’ll still have a ringside seat to see everything that’s going on.” And it’s been so exciting to see you and the staff take everything further and to do so many things that sometimes are not possible when you’re building an organization. And so to take those next steps, your deep commitment to issues of equity and inclusivity, just becoming so clear in the activities that have been going on, this admiration of taking us through this pandemic and back out to a slightly different side than we were before, but reopening the museum, seeing how you manage that with so much care and grace, and always incredibly thoughtful about everyone, right, about staff, about our visitors, and how are people going to be made comfortable in our spaces. And so there’s been that piece of looking, not exactly from the outside, but certainly from a different vantage point that has been really exciting to see because, of course, you don’t want to think, “Oh, gosh, what’s going to happen when I go, you know, and what’s going to be different, right?” Because everyone does different things, and so, we all have different visions, and so just watching it grow has been incredible to me. And of course, it almost goes without saying that the museum community at the university is so strong, but having someone like you amongst us, I know that me and others around us are just so deeply appreciate your… we talk a lot about sort partnership, but I always think yeah, there’s people who’s really good thoughts, and then there’s the rest of us soaking it up. Yeah, there’s the soaking up piece that is one of the wonders of working in the community that we work in and it’s such a diverse community. But when we’re thinking about these hard and complicated questions that face all our situations right now, having people around you that are just people that you admired so deeply and want to sort of say, “Okay, how would Brenda handle this? How can I take some of those things that I see in her and use that to do good things in the role I’m in at the moment,” and I think many people feel the same way, so I think it’s been great to have an opportunity to really think about it and not just be looking back at the HMSC that I knew and started but seeing how it’s grown and doing different things, and that’s been really wonderful for me and would not have been possible without you, Brenda.
Brenda Tindal 55:43
Oh. Thank you, Jane.
Jennifer Berglund 55:46
I agree 100%. I couldn’t have said it better than that. Brenda Tindal and Jane Pickering, thank you so much for being here today. This has been such a wonderful conversation.
Jane Pickering 56:03
Thank you, Jennie.
Brenda Tindal 56:04
Thank you so much, Jenny for being one clever but also really a brilliant steward of the conversation, per usual.
Jane Pickering 56:11
Heat, hear to that.
Jennifer Berglund 56:14
Thank you. Today’s HMSC Connects! podcast was edited by Eden Piacitelli, and produced by me, Jennifer Berglund and the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. Special thanks to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, and to Brenda Tindal and Jane Pickering for their wisdom and expertise. And as always, thank you so much for listening. If you like today’s podcast, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts. See in a couple of weeks.