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. We have a very exciting episode for you today. Caroline Fernald is HMSC’s brand-new Executive Director. She’s coming to us from the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum at the University of California Berkeley, where she served as Executive Director, and before that, she was the executive director of the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, New Mexico. Today, I’m sharing with you a segment of our wonderful conversation in which we talked about a great many things. But perhaps most importantly, we talked about Caroline’s philosophy of leadership, which she has carefully curated over her many years in the museum world. I must say, I think we’re in very good hands. Here she is. Caroline Fernald, welcome to the show.
Caroline Fernald 01:23
Thank you, happy to be here.
Jennifer Berglund 01:29
You grew up in rural Illinois and discovered you wanted to work in museums at an early age. How were you first exposed to museums and what was the initial appeal?
Caroline Fernald 01:43
I first became exposed to museums from being the beneficiary of a rural busing program that brought rural kids into Chicago to go on field trips, and some of the first museums that I remember going to are the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, and these, to this day, remain some of my favorite museums to visit. I go visit at least once a year, if not more than once a year. I also really remember a museum in central Illinois, because that’s where I’m from, called the Funk House. It sounds more exciting and exotic than perhaps was. It was a historic home of a farmer who also had a passion for collecting minerals, and so it was a preserved historic home and a small mineral and gem museum on site, and the curator lived there. He was just this sort of dynamic, enthusiastic person and I just thought how cool to live at a museum and know everything there is to know about this old home and rocks and all of that, and so I just was enthralled. I want to do that one day. Little did I know that that’s actually what I wanted to do; however, as a fully-fledged adult now, the thought of living where I work would be hell on earth in the end. Maybe it would be cool. I don’t know, it depends on the site, but you need a little bit of work-life balance, I think, and it’s healthy. So that — to me — it was amazing, and the person that this historic home originally had built, he collected a lot of minerals, but he also found a lot of stone points on his property. And that was something that my siblings and I would do. We weren’t farmers, but we lived in farmland surrounded by cornfields and soybean fields, and every spring when the tractors would till the soil, turn everything up and turn up all the earth, we would go out and dig around. It was really boring living in central Illinois surrounded by cornfields, and so that was a fun activity. We would dig around in the newly tilled earth, and find porcelain and ceramic pieces from all the different farmhouses. There used to be many, many more before things spread out a little bit more. So ceramic pieces, porcelain pieces, glass from previous farms that had been in the area, and we were always looking for stone points, and I think my brother said that he found arrowheads, but he was probably lying to me. Certainly not without the realm of possibility because Illinois, had in that area, many, many, many different Indigenous groups that lived or moved through that area.
Jennifer Berglund 04:14
Also interestingly, I love this description. Your dad was a firefighter who worked at a nuclear plant, and I just think it’s hilarious that you describe it this way. So your — your dad’s basically Homer Simpson, and then your mom’s Marge.
Caroline Fernald 04:28
Yep.
Jennifer Berglund 04:29
Tell me about that.
Caroline Fernald 04:29
Homer and Marge, my parents. My dad was, for a very long time, a firefighter, and then we moved to Illinois from Michigan when I was two years old. My very first memory is our driveway as we pulled into the driveway and my oldest sister was calling dibs on the biggest room. My dad worked at the nuclear power plant in Clinton, Illinois in fire protection, and so training people on what to do if there was a disaster because if there was a disaster at a nuclear power plant, that’s a pretty major event. That’s what my dad did, and that’s why I called him Homer Simpson, my mom is less so as Marge.
Jennifer Berglund 05:02
No blue beehive.
Caroline Fernald 05:04
No blue beehive. No, no wild hair colors whatsoever. So that’s what my dad did. And he worked there for a long time, up until I was finishing up high school and my dad actually was laid off when I was finishing up high school. So while I was trying to make decisions about the next step in my education journey, it became much more challenging because money was a barrier. It made me ineligible in some ways for certain types of funding because of his layoff settlement. Also, at the same time, there wasn’t the capacity for my parents to be able to support me in being able to further my education so that was a barrier at the time for that.
Jennifer Berglund 05:04
You went to community college for a little while after high school in Illinois, but you decided to take a little bit of a break after high school, which by the way, I’m a big fan of. I did the same thing. And you left your hometown at 20 and spent a few years in Savannah. Your sister had been in Atlanta and traveled to Savannah, and kind of fell in love with it. And you’re like, “Okay, I’ll be here for a little while.” And then you went back to school, eventually, at the University of Illinois in Chicago. So you kind of had this period of discovery between attending community college for a little while, spending a few years in Savannah, and then coming back to Illinois. Tell me about those years, and what really became a period of discovery for you, and how you think that shaped you as an aspiring scholar and set you on what would ultimately be your path as an art historian.
Caroline Fernald 05:44
I think, in many ways, the whole experience, the money being a barrier, education not being really as available to me in the way that I had wanted it to be, really shaped me in some of the decisions that I made. And I would also say that at that age, for me, I did not have the maturity, or the determination to be advancing myself in life, and so it was in many ways, in retrospect, in hindsight, it was good that I had several years to just figure myself out and discover what I wanted to be doing, and to get more serious about that. So yes, I went to community college in central Illinois for about two years. And that was really good for me because it allowed me to mature. It’s very difficult for people going directly from high school to college. They don’t know how to do anything, and I really didn’t know anything. I didn’t know what really a major was, I didn’t know why you selected a major. I didn’t know any of the structures of what higher education was, and so community college helped prepare me for that. Also, I had and I still have very expansive interests, and so at a much lower price point, I was able to explore my expansive interests at a lower risk, financially. But I still had to pay for community college with student loans. I had to work full-time — took naps in my car. Sometimes naps were long and missed class. So I feel like that helped shape me and then living in Savannah, it was I guess, the first time that I was able to do something completely for myself, just because I wanted to. And I went to Savannah on a trip and just fell in love with the city. I understand that you live in Savannah, so I think you can understand.
Jennifer Berglund 08:21
I understand 100%. Yeah.
Caroline Fernald 08:24
Beautiful place, and just being new to the Boston area, there’s a connection for me. It was being surrounded by trees and green spaces and historic homes and museums and cemeteries. I like going to cemeteries. It reminds me of what I loved about Savannah, just being able to walk so many places and just see so much history and beauty everywhere. So living in Savannah, I was there for also about four years, and loved it there, but I was starting to see a lot of the friends that I had made that were going to college there graduate, and move on, and I was thinking like, “I want that, for me. I want a degree. I’m smart enough. I can do this.” Again, money was a barrier. I was struggling to be able to get student loans to be able to go to college. I couldn’t go to college, really to the extent that I wanted to when I was living in Savannah, and so I was still eligible for state tuition in Illinois, without being a permanent resident there, so I moved back to Illinois, and enrolled after a year of having to save up money in order to be able to do so at the University of Illinois, Chicago. And things really took off for me once I got to that point. I had to save money just to apply. I had to work three jobs. My first semester at the University of Illinois, Chicago, I think I was still working three jobs, and it was such a freeing experience to have enough money saved up so I could go to the Apple Store and buy myself a laptop so I could be a college student…
Jennifer Berglund 08:39
Yeah.
Caroline Fernald 09:54
…and not have to rely on the ones in the library. And then I went right from the Apple Store to the place where I was working. I went in and quit. I was really craving to just like lighten that load a little bit. My being a barrier, education just being something I had to really work for. It wasn’t just the money part, I had to fight with myself. I had to fight with myself in my own motivation and lack in seriousness, and not having the capacity to define what I wanted to do exactly, and so it was really transformative for me going to the University of Illinois Chicago Art History Program, and having some most wonderful faculty who were incredibly supportive. I didn’t know anything about applying for scholarships beyond just filling out a FAFSA form, and I appreciated so much that they recognized, I guess, my academic potential, and I started getting awarded scholarships. I didn’t know that you could apply for such things, and really appreciate that recognition I got from them and helped give me the confidence and determination to be like, “Oh, I’m actually good at this. I can do college, which I hadn’t really been good at college before, and started actually thinking about next steps. Okay, I could do a bachelor’s degree, but now that I’m good at this, I could actually do something in this field that I’m also good at, and what would that be, and what kind of degree do I need in order to do that? And so really remembering being an avid museum-goer my entire life, but really remembering how inspirational childhood experiences in museums had been, and thinking being in a museum would be a real draw for me, working in a museum. How cool would it be to live in a museum? It wouldn’t be at all but getting serious and being like, “Okay, so in order to work in a museum, in order to get the certain types of jobs I was interested in a museum, I would need an advanced degree and so started getting serious about pursuing that and looking at graduate programs with the help of the very supportive faculty at UIC. The classes I took there also really piqued my interest. At the time that I was there, anyway, they offered a lot of what we would call an art history field non-western classes. So I certainly took lots of classes on Baroque art history and architecture, and the Renaissance and medieval art and architecture, but also took classes on South Asian art, Native American art, Mesoamerican and South American. That, to me, was really eye-opening. That’s what I got very excited about. Not that I don’t like the Renaissance and the Baroque period and all of that. I grew up watching Sister Wendy on PBS. Is that a cultural…
Jennifer Berglund 09:54
Yeah. Love Sister Wendy! Oh my god, I love Sister Wendy. Anybody out there, if you haven’t seen Sister Wendy, watch Sister Wendy. It’s totally amazing. I think it was in high school that I got super into it. My dad introduced me. Amazing. Anyway, oh my god, so funny you brought that up.
Caroline Fernald 12:45
Only on PBS could a show like Sister Wendy thrive.
Jennifer Berglund 12:48
I’m so glad you brought this up and your interest in non-western art history classes, because this is really important in your trajectory. While you were at the University of Illinois Chicago, taking one of those classes, you first encountered an object that would change your life. Tell me about this object, and what was it about it that struck you initially, and then tell me about this long journey that it took you on, and the ways in which it influenced your understanding of how objects should be utilized in the museum space.
Caroline Fernald 13:26
I was in a Native American art history class being taught by Professor Virginia Miller. I took several classes with her and I’ve stayed in touch. I really like her. She was my advisor as an undergraduate, and in this Native American art history class, we had an assignment to go to a museum and pick an object from one of their Native American galleries and do research on it, and go beyond what the label said: investigate this object, learn about it, learn everything you can about it, and write a paper. I went to the Art Institute of Chicago, and they had a newly reinstalled, very small, Native American Gallery, and there was this gorgeous ceramic pot. Very large, from Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico, and on the outside of the pot it’s decorated with a tropical bird, and lots of flowers, and I really just love the dynamic design on the exterior. I love the shape of the vessel. I had never been to New Mexico, but it sounded beautiful, and I was very curious, not ever having been to New Mexico, but knowing at least a fair amount about the different climates of the United States that this tropical bird on the outside was not native to that area. Was pretty certain of that, and so I was curious as to why this tropical bird was on a pot from the late 1800s. How did it get there? Why was it there? What does it mean? And so that’s kind of where I started doing this research, and so that class, that project, really got me interested in Native American art. It also got me interested in what at the time I saw as an issue. You know, this is a little bit of naivete as an undergraduate, but an issue within the museum field that there was such a small representation in art history survey books in museum collections and representation in the galleries and museums like the Art Institute, but many others that are similar in their scope of their collections. There was such a small representation of Native American art in art museums, and I thought that’s not right, that should be different. It often seems that if you wanted to see Native American art, you had to go to a natural history museum or an anthropology museum, that it wasn’t given the same level of respect and reverence and appreciation that other forms of art were given. So that was something that motivated me in a sense. Curiosity and fascination with this object born from this project, I started volunteering at the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian, which is just north of Chicago and Evanston. I was a docent and I worked at the front desk, and I helped with kids’ crafts, and really started learning more and more, and got motivated to go to graduate school. Started applying to graduate programs with the intention that I wanted to do something about that. I wanted to improve things in the museum field. I wanted Native American arts to get a higher status and platform in art museums, and again, there’s a little bit of naivete around that, but it’s different when you’re looking at an art museum and you’re looking at an anthropology museum. We’re contending with different things in these two very different types of museums. In the art museum, it’s almost as if we’re still fighting to get recognition for Native art or to get contemporary Native artists not relegated to the Native American art gallery, you know, to be included in just the contemporary art space. Within the anthropology museum, we’re really contending more with returning cultural heritage to communities, repatriation, doing better about community collaboration, and these are not things that necessarily aren’t happening in an art museum. But the two different types of museums, there’s a really big difference in what the major challenges are, I would say. There’s definitely parallels. The fascination with this Acoma Pueblo pot at the Art Institute of Chicago — it inspired what became my master’s thesis, and then also my PhD dissertation. For my master’s thesis, I felt like I needed to understand this pot. I needed to understand everything about it. I needed to understand how it was made, who made it, why the design looked like this, what it symbolized, what it meant — the sociocultural history of that time in New Mexico that motivated someone to make a pot like this for a tourist market that was newly emerging. So that became my master’s thesis project where I basically went from the time this pot had been created, the late 1800s, backwards. So looking at centuries of pottery creation in the American Southwest, trade between the American Southwest and Indigenous communities in Mexico, the trade of scarlet macaws up into the Southwest, and the exchange of turquoise. It is just this really amazing history of exchange between great distances, even before any contact with any Europeans whatsoever. That was the crux of my master’s thesis project, but I’ve learned a really valuable lesson in the process of doing my research on that project. In my quest to learn everything that I could, to know everything I could about this pot, I came against more of an ethical dilemma as a scholar, and as a researcher, and to recognize that I am not from that community. I’m not from that culture, and I don’t have a right to know everything, even if it is accessible. A lot of late 19th-century anthropological reports documented or collected a lot of information from community members from Pueblo communities in the American Southwest. Really learning through that process that as a researcher, you don’t need to know everything, and you don’t have a right to everything, and you sometimes need to make a choice what you read, or what you listen to, and excuse yourself from that situation that that’s not for you. You haven’t been initiated into that community or that culture in order to have that access to that information, that that information that may be readily available at the library or online was extracted under duress or unethical circumstances and to really recognize that and start to recognize when that happened, and the different scenarios in which that occurred and self-censor, in a way, to not read that, not include that in your research. It’s not your business. So that’s a valuable lesson I learned in that process is that I did not have a right as a scholar to know everything and to learn everything. As academics, you’re an expert on something, or people will introduce someone who has a PhD, they’re an expert on this or they’re an expert on that, and rethinking expertise. There’s no possible way I could be an expert on Pueblo pottery. There’s no possible way for me to be an expert on Native American art, there’s no possible way for me to be an expert on even the most niche subject within that broader history because I am not from that community. And I will never have generations of information passed down to me in order to understand from that perspective and to understand truly the importance and significance and symbolism of that. And so, again, learning that expertise was not what I was trying to attain. I was not trying to be or promote myself as an expert on any subjects related to Native American art history, because I didn’t think that me, as someone who is external to that heritage, could have that expertise.
Jennifer Berglund 21:08
Tell me, how did that knowledge shape what you ultimately did for your PhD? Because this object, this single object — which by the way, this really speaks to the power of objects — how did that shape you from going from a master’s wanting to learn everything about this one thing, to having this realization that you didn’t have a right to that knowledge? How did you then take the knowledge and the realization into the scholarship that formed your dissertation in your PhD?
Caroline Fernald 21:34
My PhD project was more around the decades surrounding the creation of this pot, so the late 1800s — going into the early 1900s — and looking more at the sociocultural circumstances of why something like this was created, what external forces were coming into that area, and what they were trying to accomplish. The late 1800s in the American Southwest is a period of significant change in that area, as technology rapidly changed, as different collecting expeditions came into the area, and so my project focused very much on the history of museum collecting, especially anthropology museums, the connection between that and the developing industry of railway tourism in the American Southwest. Tourism and the arts are still both massive industries in that area, but this is the early years of it, and how there is this sort of slippage between anthropology museum collecting, tourism, art production, and the promotion of that area by artists, Native American and non-Native American, and there’s just this fabulous and fascinating just messiness to that history that I just can’t seem to get enough of.
Jennifer Berglund 22:52
Where did you go after finishing your education, and how did this knowledge shape the way you approached your work in these spaces?
Caroline Fernald 23:03
As a graduate student, you’re talking a lot in seminars about how museums should be better, museums should do this, museums should do that, museums need to be better. And I thought, “Well, okay, then let’s do it.” I started reaching out to people — museum professionals. I started reaching out to people for advice, and you know, what kind of degrees did they have, how did they get to their career, and started to figure out that the best way to affect the most expeditious and lasting change in a museum was to lead the museum, not a curator, not a collections manager, not a conservator. There’s so many different jobs in museums… …but the most expeditious way to lead change and create lasting change in a museum and the broader museum field is in leadership, and so I was very strategic in pursuing museum leadership as a career. Before I’d even finished my PhD, I had the great, great benefit of being selected to do a couple of internships working for a small historic site in Taos, New Mexico, called the E. Irving Couse and Joseph Henry Sharp Historic Site, and it was directly relevant to the research I was doing on railway tourism, and Southwest and Pueblo pottery. It was almost bizarre how perfectly this connected with what I was doing at the time, and that was great fun. That whole experience was great fun. This house had a collection of Pueblo pottery from the late 1800s. I cataloged it all and got that documented, and then the next summer I came back and I did the same thing with their beadwork collection that the artists had collected in his lifetime, did rehousing for everything, created a cataloging system. So that was a really fulfilling and rewarding experience, and I got to live in Taos which is heaven on earth. And a job opened up in Taos to lead a small museum there. The focus is on the arts and culture of the American Southwest and so, again, a really good fit for what I was doing research-wise and a good fit for just the experience I had already had in museums. I had volunteered at the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian while I was doing my undergraduate degree, and I’ve had a few different gigs throughout my graduate school experience that provided just a wide array of experiences working in the museum field, so all the different jobs, I’ve had a little tiny bit of experience, and I saw that as a perfect job for me and perfect jobs just don’t open up every hour on the hour. So I became very strategic about my next move, and I applied for that position. In speaking to my advisor at graduate school, we talked about ways that I could expedite getting to the point of all the dissertation ABD and when you’re kind of free to leave the confines of the university if you so choose, to go do field research, or whatever. So I did my general exams and my dissertation proposal in one semester. It was awful. I was very determined. I’ve done things like that to myself several times in the interest of just moving things along.
Jennifer Berglund 23:41
Right. Oh, no.
Caroline Fernald 24:56
So I did that all in one semester and ended up getting the job at this place called the Millicent Rogers Museum, which is in Taos as the Executive Director, and I was there for four years. I loved that job. I loved the team that I worked with there, the collection is incredible. It’s in a beautiful setting overlooking Taos Mountain, could not have loved it more. I finished up my PhD in my spare time in my first year and a half leading that museum.
Jennifer Berglund 26:29
In your spare time.
Caroline Fernald 26:29
In my spare time, which again, was awful. It was absolutely awful. I had the worst social life and — very determined though — and I had been given a lot of advice and warning in many ways from mentors to me that “Don’t be like me and go pick a job at a museum and then you ever finish your dissertation.” I’m gonna finish this dissertation. I do feel that it meets the old adage of the best dissertation is a done dissertation, in all of its many flaws.
Jennifer Berglund 26:54
Yeah.
Caroline Fernald 26:55
It was done, and that’s all that really matters at the end of the day. After having that experience, and having finished my dissertation, I was ready for the next challenge. So even though I dearly, dearly love the museum and living in Taos and had made such wonderful friends there, I was ready for the next challenge. And so I was pursuing a job that would be more directly relevant to having a PhD, and so started looking at jobs at universities, university museums, and ultimately got a job as Executive Director of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California Berkeley campus. I definitely got the challenge that I was looking for, and I really enjoyed it. I did.
Jennifer Berglund 27:40
Can you tell me a little bit about your experience working in New Mexico and working with the Pueblo Community? How did that come about, and how did that influence your trajectory later on? Oh, okay.
Caroline Fernald 27:53
So the Millicent Rogers Museum where I was Executive Director — it has a long-standing relationship with Taos Pueblo, which is the closest Native American community in the area, and this goes back to the namesake of the museum, Millicent Rogers. She was an early to mid-century fashion icon, and kind of look at the Southwest influence in Ralph Lauren. Periodically, there’s a Southwest sort of influence on the runway. Millicent Rogers continues to be very influential long after she is passed on. She was an early patron of Elsa Schiaparelli, and so there’s a lot of nods in that fashion house to the influence of Millicent Rogers, and she was a huge patron of Charles James which is a name that isn’t as familiar today unless you have an interest, like apparently I do, in fashion history. Hugely influential so that every time the Met Museum has one of their huge… every year they do a huge fashion exhibit and of course, the Met Gala. They almost always have several gowns or garments that had been donated to the museum by way of Millicent Rogers and her family. Almost always something with a Millicent Rogers connection on display at the Met for their fashion exhibits. Oh, she came to Taos, she had health issues, she had had rheumatic fever as a child, and she came to Taos to seek solace to improve her health. She just was drawn to it in some way, and really fell in love with the local Native American art. She was also really interested in the local Hispanic art forms of the area. She started collecting. She became very inspired by Taos Pueblo’s cultural customs, she would attend dances that she was allowed to attend, not the private dances that are not available for anybody from the public to attend, and she really loved the area and appreciated the area and she died fairly young, she was in her early 50, from lifelong complications from rheumatic fever. Her heart was multiple times the size that’s normal, and had had several strokes and heart attacks, and her youngest son founded the museum in her honor. It was her connection to Taos Pueblo. It was her sons, two sons, that were very instrumental in the early years of the museum, who likewise kind of continued that legacy and from the museum’s very founding in the 1950s, had in its charter a relationship with Taos Pueblo and respecting the governance structure of Taos Pueblo, and always reserved a spot on its board, which continues to this day, for the governor of the Pueblo and does multiple events throughout the year in partnership with Taos Pueblo. And so that was something that I really valued in my time there. I don’t think I’ve worked anywhere since that respected an annual Native American feast day as a paid holiday. Every year on September 30, we got San Geronimo, which was the patron saint of Taos Pueblo, this is coming from the Catholic influence, and we all went to the Pueblo — to the dances and the dance is open to the public, but you have to be very respectful and not be a nuisance. And you can get invited into someone’s home, and the wonderful office manager at the Millicent Rogers Museum was from Taos Pueblo and she would always invite everybody from work into her home for the feast. So you literally are feasting, and I always looked forward to it every year. I absolutely loved it. I would go to all of the dances that were open to the public.
Jennifer Berglund 31:24
That sounds like an incredible experience.
Caroline Fernald 31:27
It was incredible, because it was such an honor, and I didn’t take for granted the opportunity to be invited into that space and into that community. That’s just not something that you always have access to, and so the honor of being able to, as a member of the public, be invited to share in this celebration or to just witness it is something I certainly am thankful for.
Jennifer Berglund 31:48
After this, you go to UC Berkeley to be the Executive Director at the University Museum. Very different. So can you describe what the differences are? What are the things that we might not expect?
Caroline Fernald 32:00
In Taos, I was running a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and I was the Executive Director. I worked with a governing board. If I needed to buy something, if I needed to pay someone, I just did it. If I had an idea and wanted to put it into effect, I could just do it. It doesn’t work that way when you’re at a University Museum. Everything has to go through someone, and the Hearst Museum being at a public, partially state-funded, university, everything goes through a pretty elaborate bureaucratic process, and these processes all exist for good reason. It reduces risk — there’s a lot of requirements for reporting and accountability. Just everything takes a lot longer. You don’t have as much freedom. You have to really learn how to be more patient, you have to be much more collaborative, and you have to be capable and willing to learn lots of different systems and processes and relearn them because they change every six months. So you have to be proactive in professional development, so that’s definitely something that I maintained, being proactive and professional development, and learning things as needed to more effectively do my job. Other ways in which things were very different — it was more so how the two museums were perceived. The Millicent Rogers Museum is really loved. It’s loved locally, it’s celebrated nationally — internationally. People from all over the world visit it and just think it’s amazing. The Hearst Museum, that was not the case. The Hearst Museum right now is continuing — really contending — with the issues around repatriation through the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. It has a long legacy that it’s contending with, that it’s working to correct. It’s working to repair or in some cases build for the very first time relationships with Native communities who have been most directly damaged by the collecting practices of that museum in its history, not recent, and just really working towards that, and that’s something that’s being done in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley’s leadership, which has prioritized repatriation. That was really the focus there at the Hearst Museum, as opposed to at the Millicent Rogers Museum. Things are much more about public-facing programs, exhibits, events.
Jennifer Berglund 34:18
As you know, and I think a lot of people know, we are contending with many of the same issues that you contended with at the Hearst Museum at the Peabody Museum at Harvard, so it’s great that we have your expertise for the public-facing side of the work that we do at the Peabody Museum. You come from this space where you’re doing a lot of public-facing work, you transition to this space where it’s sort of less so, it’s sort of working on the repatriation aspect, and now you come to a space at Harvard, where you’re working with the Peabody Museum, which is contending with many of the same issues that you were dealing with at the Hearst Museum, but you’re working for HMSC, the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, which is the more public-facing side of not just the Peabody Museum, other museums as well, a Natural History Museum, Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Museum of the Ancient Near East, and so you’re sort of melding those skill sets together. How do you see your past experiences at both kinds of museums melding together for you in this new role?
Caroline Fernald 35:27
It is a direct sort of build-up in many ways of that, and I am, of course, still getting settled into the role, and I’m still figuring out where I can be of use. So the Peabody Museum, which has this wonderful partnership with, they have leadership, they have a team that’s focused on repatriation, they’ve recently hired several people. So the space that we fill in that is how do we help the public understand what’s going on at the Peabody in a way that’s respectful of the tribes that are coming for visits, a way that’s respectful to the deep hurt and trauma that people are working through as they’re trying to advance the repatriation, repair this damage that’s been done to them. And so I’m still figuring out where we fit in there, and how we can be supportive of that and help educate the public. But being mindful of the fact that we don’t want to be a nuisance to our colleagues at the Peabody and be demanding that they educate us and tell us information because they have their hands full. They really need to be able to focus on the work that they’re doing, advancing repatriation, so still trying to figure out where we fit in there, and how we can be supportive and how we can also help translate, you know, the complicated work that they’re doing, the heavy emotional labor that everybody, the tribes coming in, and the team at the Peabody working together towards this, how do we translate this so that the general public can understand. It’s such a steep learning curve for many people who have never even really heard about this — who don’t know what NAGPRA means, or THPO. There’s this language too, et al. How do we make this accessible for the general public so they can understand why so many things have been taken off exhibit at the Peabody, or why that floor is closed today, or why the museum can’t show you this object anymore, or why the object isn’t in the museum’s collection anymore? And so I think there is space for me to fit in there and help with that in partnership and in consultation with our colleagues at the Peabody, but again, I’m still figuring that out. And it’s important to me that we, in our eagerness to do what we do best — which is connect with the public, educate the public — that we do not inadvertently become a nuisance to our dear colleagues at the Peabody, who are working very hard to move repatriation forward.
Jennifer Berglund 37:58
HMSC, the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, it’s, of course, not just the Peabody, we have the Harvard Museum of Natural History, we have the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, we have the Geological Museum and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments. We serve more than just an Anthropology/Ethnology Museum, and you are heading us up. What do you think your experience brings to these other spaces, specifically, I’m thinking of the place like the Museum of Natural History, and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments. What do your past experiences bring to those museums? How do you hope to shape how we think about exhibitry in those different spaces?
Caroline Fernald 38:49
My background, and you’ve gotten a sense for this from this conversation with me about my academic background, my academic interests, my work experience, it’s really all been more in the culture part of the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, and I’m sure the search committee knew that going into this. I do not have a strong science background, but it’s not to say that I lack an interest or an appreciation for that. With the Natural History Museum, with the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, and with the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, in addition to the Peabody, and each of these institutions have their own respective directors and curators and staff teams. and we are really focused on the public-facing. How do we translate the academic research of the teams at these different museums in a way that is beneficial for the public to understand or welcoming spaces for the public, engaging programs that people who are not necessarily PhDs at Harvard to enjoy and learn from and get a benefit from the resources of Harvard? This speaks very much to — what is the civic mission of all museums is that we have an obligation in our existence as collecting institutions, as exhibiting institutions, we have an obligation to make our resources and our collections as available and accessible to the public as possible. That is my core value in many ways — that the civic mission of museums, that’s why I’m in this business is to do that very thing, and so this is something that you can do at any type of museum. You don’t have to necessarily have the expertise in that field, and that, to me is important to not be an expert in everything. I don’t need to be an expert on Geology, or on Vertebrate Zoology. I don’t need to be that expert, because we have that expertise here. My job is to work with the HMSC team in making that information from those experts available and accessible to the public. But I think you’re asking me about ways that I can connect my past experiences working with communities, working from the cultural sector, with the Natural History Museum, with the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, and yes, absolutely yes. I think that this is directly relevant and that there are ways that you can do interdisciplinary programming that help attract and relate to audiences that you wouldn’t typically attract to the Natural History Museum or attract to a collection of historic scientific instruments. I know that right now, the Collection of Historic Scientific Instruments is working on an upcoming exhibit on measuring difference. They’re working with a curator and students in developing this exhibit that is very interdisciplinary in its approach, and that, to me, is very exciting the way to go across different fields and bring all these different audiences together and in conversation with one another. You spend enough time at a university working at a university, you’ll eventually get invited to some manner of reception or lecture with a little reception afterwards, and events, a cocktail party or something, and you’ll interact with people you have nothing in common with. Someone’s an astrophysicist, someone works in pharmaceuticals, and you say, “Oh, I work in museums,” and they go, “Alright.” You just move on because they have nothing to say to you, and you have nothing to say to them, and it’s the most awkward experience possible. So I like the challenge of finding ways to relate seemingly disparate subject matters with people who don’t feel that they have any relation whatsoever, or base-level understanding of Near East archaeology, historic scientific instruments, algae. How do you connect people across that? And a thing that’s really impressed me, as I’ve gotten more and more familiar with the exhibits and events that we do through HMSC is that this is already built into our operations. I’m not coming in as this great innovator, like, “Oh, have you ever thought about bringing an artist into….” No, you already are doing all of this, and so this is really exciting for me because this is something that’s already built into the culture of the work that we do at HMSC. So there’s an exhibit right now on Henry David Thoreau’s flower botany specimens that he collected, and there’s some different artists who responded to these botany samples that Thoreau collected for Harvard. There’s examples of this all over the different museums where this cross-disciplinary approach is really put into effect, and it’s been successful. And I, of course, have ideas for additional ways that we can do that, but I love the fact that it’s already here. I’m not having to convince everyone of the value of this, you all already know it.
Jennifer Berglund 43:35
Well, thank you. I think that’s true. I definitely think that’s true. But as you say, I’m so glad to hear that you have some ideas, too, and that we can work creatively with you on those ideas. I think there’s a lot of potential. You have expertise working with objects, and one of the things that’s really been interesting to me, working across museums over the years, as many of the collections that we have, that are housed in different collections, and different museums were actually acquired at the same time. So you have things that were in the Peabody Museum or the Museum of the Ancient Near East, or the mineralogical collection, and in the natural history collection, the zoological collection, that were collected at the same time in the same expedition. There’s a story there to tell that involves science, that involves these issues that we’re thinking about how collections were collected, the role these expeditions, played, both for good and for ill and really thinking about the collections collectively.
Caroline Fernald 44:41
Oh, yes, absolutely, and this really speaks to my immediate interest because the research that I do, again, in my spare time working on a book. I’m committed to not having a social life ever. It’s loosely based on my dissertation research, but it is very much related and pertinent to what you just brought up in that these 19th-century collecting expeditions, the divisions between academic disciplines were not as clear cut then, and so these university-sponsored or government museums sponsored or federal government-sponsored collecting expeditions were surveying the area for land development, for mining development, they were collecting geological and botanical samples, they were documenting the Indigenous communities of the area for a variety of different purposes, and so they were also collecting from those communities to bring back to the different museums. And these separations in these academic disciplines were just not as separate as they are now, and this is evident in the types of collections. As you pointed out they were collected at the same time by the exact same institutions that over time have separated into different museums or different collections that used to be or the objects or collections or specimens or what have you moved into the separate museum at Harvard, but this happens at all sorts of universities. At UC Berkeley, I was doing research on one of the collections there, and it had previously had botanical samples in it that had been at some point moved into the university’s herbaria. So this is definitely something that happens over time that in the 19th century, things were all collected in one go, and then spread out across the different university museums and academic departments. Though there’s a lot of opportunity for making connections across those disciplines now, this is something that we do have in our programming, where we have drawing classes on drawing botanical samples. The lectures we host or events and programs that we have really do that and looking forward to just doing more of it.
Jennifer Berglund 44:51
Oh my god. Tell me about your impressions of HMSC so far. What are you most excited about, and how do you hope to shape us as we move into the future?
Caroline Fernald 47:12
I am impressed by the quality of the exhibits at the HMSC museums. I’ve been trying desperately to find even 15 minutes of each day just to wander the different museums and pretend to be some anonymous visitor, but now that I’ve gotten to know everybody, I’m not anonymous anymore. So I’ve been trying to find time each day to just wander the different museums, go through the galleries, and really familiarize myself not only just with the layout of the space because it’s maze-like. We had this lovely winter party or staff appreciation events the other week, and the leftovers were in one of the offices and I had no idea how to get there, and Wendy, the manager of the gift shop, actually had to escort me because I was so hopelessly lost.
Jennifer Berglund 48:01
Yeah, been there.
Caroline Fernald 48:02
Yes, but familiarizing myself with the space, with the collections, the style, our tone in our interpretive labels, sometimes there’s different voices, sometimes there’s kind of a more consistent institutional voice, different ways in which we incorporate community voices, or have students write the labels or just different community partners write the labels. And so seeing all this through the variety of exhibits has been so rewarding, and I wish I could have more time to do this just countless hours to go through the museums and really read every label and marvel at every single specimen and object on exhibit. But that’ll probably take me several years if I keep on doing it at increments of 15 minutes at a time. But I think the exhibits are what has impressed me the most. I love the variety. I love the quality of the exhibits. I love how so many of our exhibits are object or specimen-focused. It’s a nice balance between the interpretive material, the text, and just the object itself getting the center stage, and that’s an exhibition style I am definitely on board with.
Jennifer Berglund 49:08
Well, thank you. I’d love to hear that. Tell me a little bit more about your vision. What do you see? What would you like to see, based on your observations so far, in the three weeks you’ve been Executive Director?
Caroline Fernald 49:19
I am benefiting greatly from stepping into a role where HMSC is already thriving. I’m not bringing an institution back from the brink. I’m not trying to dig us out of some financial hole. HMSC is thriving. We have almost rebuilt our attendance records from pre-COVID levels. Very, very close to having rebuilt our attendance levels. Our audience has come back, our level of programs has come back — there aren’t major staff shortages. All of this has been in place prior to me coming here, and so I am greatly benefiting from that, so I certainly am not going to be taking credit for that hard work and that success, and just acknowledging that I’m benefiting from the expertise and cohesiveness of this team and this partnership that is HMSC that can be kind of confusing from our external audiences like, what are you do what is this? So I’m benefiting greatly from that working and thriving for the past 10 years, having great leadership, having great staff members as part of HMSC, and the museums in partnership with HMSC being supportive of that structure. What I would like to see us do is continue to build off those successes, continue to work towards our strategic goals of diversifying our audience, being more accessible to a wide array of audiences, and a changing audience. How is society changing? And are we meeting that demand? Are we being accommodating? Are we being welcoming? Are our labels and our exhibits, and the events that we host accessible to the audiences that are already coming, but also the audiences that don’t come as frequently or don’t come at all, and how do we reach out to them? I know these are things that people that work at HMSC care about passionately. We’re continuing to build off of those goals. I see a lot of opportunity for more cross-disciplinary programming, and I know that the different directors and curatorial teams at the museums really are in command of developing the exhibit ideas, but in the way that we can be supportive in making these exhibits look the best that they possibly can. I see a lot of opportunity for getting increased philanthropic support for the museums, and that’s something I have a lot of background in. And another old, little quip in the museum field is no money, no mission. Working towards really getting more philanthropic support and advancing various educational programs that are supported through philanthropy. One area in which I’m hoping to make some significant progress is we currently charge admission at the Natural History Museum and at the Peabody, and there’s a big initiative in Boston right now being led by the mayor to make more cultural institutions free. I directly benefited from free admission and buses. As a young woman in Chicago, I checked out the public library passes or used my student ID to be able to get into museums. I’ve always been an avid museum-goer, and that would have been a financial barrier. I talked about financial barriers earlier to having to pay admission to go to all the museums that I had been frequenting. And so one thing that I’d really like to tackle is how do I get us to a point of financial stability where we don’t have to charge admission? That to me would be a huge accomplishment. It would be hugely exciting.
Jennifer Berglund 52:50
Carolyn Fernald, thank you so much for being here. This has been a wonderful conversation and it’s been really nice to get to know you.
Caroline Fernald 52:57
Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure to be here and having come directly from the Bay Area in California to Boston in the dead of winter, no, my coat is not warm enough, and yes, I am cold.
Jennifer Berglund 53:13
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 Harvard Museums of Science and Culture and to Caroline Fernald for her wisdom and expertise. And 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 you in a few weeks.