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Caroline Jean Fernald was selected as the new executive director of the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra announced last month. She began her tenure Wednesday.
Fernald, who previously served as the executive director of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, will oversee a partnership including the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, and the Harvard Museum of Natural History.
As the director of the Hearst Museum, Fernald, who holds a doctorate in Native American art history, was involved in the repatriation of Native American human remains and cultural artifacts held in the museum’s collection, as required by the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
She will be involved in a similar repatriation process at Harvard, as the University works to accelerate its return of thousands of Native American human remains housed primarily in the Peabody Museum. The scope of Harvard’s human remains holdings was first revealed in a September 2022 report commissioned by the University, a draft of which was leaked to The Crimson earlier that year.
“I really love going to museums,” Fernald said in an interview. “But I think, with something that you really have a strong affection for, that you also have to be responsible for the issues with that.”
Fernald succeeds former HMSC director Brenda Tindal, who was named the inaugural FAS Chief Campus Curator last February.
Before joining the Hearst Museum in 2019, Fernald led the Millicent Rogers Museum, an art museum in Taos, N.M., where she said one of her favorite exhibits involved featuring paintings, textiles, and pottery that depicted plants that were native to the area and highlighting their impact on local communal art practices — an interdisciplinary approach she said she intends to bring to HMSC.
She said HMSC’s broad scope holds the potential to “connect art and science and history and religion” through programs and exhibits bridging different departments.
Fernald also said she is excited to work with Harvard faculty to engage their students with the museums’ collections directly.
“Something that I really enjoy about museums and higher education is the focus on connecting students directly with the objects,” Fernald said. “That was what compelled me to want to work in museums to begin with.”
—Staff writer Neeraja S. Kumar can be reached at neeraja.kumar@thecrimson.com.
—Staff writer Annabel M. Yu can be reached at annabel.yu@thecrimson.com.
