by Gretchen Kell
The Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology has a new director--Rosemary Joyce, who comes to campus from Harvard.
Formerly an associate professor of anthropology at Harvard and assistant curator of pre-Columbian archaeology at its Peabody Museum, Joyce replaces Burton Benedict, who retired as director of the Hearst Museum in August.
An anthropologist and archaeologist, Joyce is co-director of two major archaeological projects in Honduras, where she has done fieldwork since 1977. She is interested in visual representations--including paintings on pottery and stone sculptures--that show community building and social values of the people of Mesoamerica and South America.
After receiving her PhD from the University of Illinois in 1985, Joyce joined Harvard, where she renovated the Latin American gallery, which had been neglected for 40 years.
Joyce said she would like to see Cornell's field school, part of one of the two Honduran projects that she leads, also accept students from Berkeley.
As the Hearst's new director, Joyce said she hopes to secure additional space to house the museum's collections. There is room for only a fraction of the Hearst's 695,000 catalogued artifacts to be displayed.
"I want to pursue more aggressively collaborating with existing space, displaying our collections in other museums in the area. My hope is that by the 100th anniversary of the museum, in the year 2002, we will have better exhibit space."