The gist of what I do: I help manage the Scholars Program, wherein we invite scholars from all over the world to come to Getty and pursue research related to an annual theme (this year’s theme is “The Fragment”).
They come and live in Getty housing for a couple of months and conduct their research. I do things like help organize scholar reading groups; facilitate connections with artists, curators, conservators, or other scholars; create programming; organize visits to other arts institutions and local artists; and help write official materials related to theme.
Growing up with nature: I spent the first part of my childhood in Washington State on Whidbey Island, which is in Puget Sound just south of the San Juan Islands. It’s a small island, so everything feels like a small town. My dad grew up in a rural part of Canada, though, and he missed the space and the great outdoors and seasons (it mostly rains in northwestern Washington), so when I was 14, we bought some land and moved to northwest Montana, close to Glacier National Park. It’s a gorgeous area. We did a lot of drives and hikes, and in the summer, we oftentimes ate our meals outdoors because it stays light outside until almost 10 pm. We lived in a remote area surrounded by forest and wildlife, which gave me a real appreciation for the beauty and peace of just being in nature.
Becoming a bookworm: When I was a kid and into my teens, I was really into animals. I had a horse named Felicia that lived on our property. But I also loved to read. It would be a beautiful day outside and it was a struggle between, “Do I go play outside or do I stay in and finish this book?” It was a 50/50 chance. Still is, sometimes!
I really enjoyed historical fiction and science fiction. I loved Lord of the Rings. One of the first things I remember really enjoying reading is the children’s versions of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology. I found the stories fascinating. Maybe calling them “stories” minimizes them too much, because one of the things I love about mythology is how the core values and beliefs of societies come out. What is important, what does it mean to be a good person, what does it mean to live a good life? All of that is interlaced through these fantastical stories.
Early museum memories: The first museum I remember going to was the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, which I loved because it combines a museum and learning with being able to touch everything and see how things work. When we lived in Montana there was a traveling exhibition that featured Egyptian material from Tutankhamen’s tomb and nearby tombs. In Montana, you don’t get exhibitions like that very often because it’s pretty rural. We drove a long way to see it and I was so excited. In those kinds of exhibitions, oftentimes they recreate an environment. You almost feel like you’re in the tomb, discovering it. That was really magical for me to see.
A passion for Egypt: For a long time I thought I would become a wildlife biologist or a zoologist. I had always loved ancient Egypt, but it wasn’t until high school that I realized I could actually do archaeology and Egyptology as a career. I don’t have a particular reason for loving ancient Egypt except that I was just always fascinated by archaeology and ancient cultures. The best way for me to focus on that at a small state school was to study anthropology and archaeology.
I started at a local community college, and after my first year I took about a year off because I got in a car accident and broke my pelvis. Then I went back and finished my associate’s degree at the community college and went on to the University of Montana to finish my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in anthropology with a focus on archaeology. As I was taking my anthropology classes, I became interested in forensic anthropology, especially human osteology. I think this was partly because after my accident I was fascinated by the idea that you can look at someone’s bones and understand a little bit about their lived experiences. Everybody thinks you just learn how they died, but you can tell a lot about people’s lives as well.
Best archeological finding: For two years I worked on an excavation of a mining town in Montana. People think of mining towns and they picture rough and rowdy men and not very many women. But one thing people don’t realize is that there were families in a lot of the mining towns. So this particular site was interesting because we found bits of children’s dolls and things like that. For me, that experience demonstrated how we think we know about history. But there’s always information that’s been lost, and information you can find that changes our impressions of what history was. That’s part of why I love archaeology so much: you’re always discovering another dimension to what you think you know.
From Egypt to Getty: I applied to various PhD programs and I got into the archaeology interdepartmental program at UCLA. When I was in grad school, I really wanted to get into the museum world. At that time, the Getty Villa was doing the “Classical World in Context: Egypt” theme for its Scholars Program, so I applied to be a research assistant. What really drew me to the job was the idea of working with scholars studying different aspects of Egypt and being able to learn from them. I got the job, so as a research assistant I worked with many different scholars at the Villa. I did things like checking bibliographies or tracking down resources, trying to find manuscripts, contacting museums and finding high quality images, or proofreading for scholars for whom English was a second language. I learned so much and am still friends with some of the scholars I assisted.
When I finished my PhD I got the job I have now, still working in the Scholars Program but at the Getty Center, full time, and focusing more on the program as a whole rather than assisting individual scholars.
Objects at Getty you love to visit: I like visiting the Mummy of Herakleides because I study human remains and find that really interesting. Being in the presence of someone from that long ago is pretty amazing.
Biggest achievement: I am really proud of the Conversations on Context discussion series that Getty Research Institute research associate Thisbe Gensler and I organize together, where we invite scholars from around the world to discuss various aspects of “The Fragment” theme. I think it’s important to bring in diverse voices and make sure we’re not getting entrenched in our own research and patterns of thought in our field. We’ve had people talking about partition in India and Pakistan and how that affected material culture and art objects and the sense of shared history now that there was a border going through that area. We had a scholar talking about concepts of borders and borderism in the US and Mexico, and how people perceive borders. We had someone talking about apartheid in South Africa, and people talking about how archaeological fragments from ancient cultures are used to interpret identity in the past.
I was really pleased with the series because I think archaeology and art history have relevance in the modern world, and we need to remember that. It’s important to look at the ways we’ve handled things in the past, the mistakes, the things that haven’t really worked, and try to figure out how to be better. Humans can be really evil creatures. But we have the capacity to be really great as well, and I do think it’s important to understand that complicated, troubled past, and try to learn from it as best we can.
