The University of Nevada, Reno Anthropology Research Museum

Interviewees: Catherine S. Fowler and Donald L. Hardesty
Interviewed: 2002
Published: 2013
Interviewer: Morgan Blanchard
UNOHP Catalog #232

The Research Museum of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno, was founded in 1980 when the department inherited a number of archaeological and ethnographic collections accumulated by the UNR branch of the Nevada Archaeological Survey, a statewide organization that operated from the late 1960s through the 1970s. Through the years, the museum became the repository of excavated materials originating from faculty contracts in prehistoric and historical archeology—materials that required space for study and analysis as well as curation. Additional ethnographic collections (including the Lulu K. Huber Basket Collection and Gloria Griffin Cline Plains Indian Collection) were also acquired, so that the space and collections needed full-time care, including cataloging, storage, and conservation. The Museum, located for decades on the fifth floor of the Ansari Business Building alongside the Department of Anthropology, also has long served as a training facility for students pursing the interdisciplinary Museum Studies minor. This oral history project, conducted in 2002, interviewed two faculty members in the Department of Anthropology, Dr. Catherine S. Fowler and Dr. Donald L. Hardesty, both of whom outline their memories of the museum’s founding as well as its role in curation and the education of UNR students in Anthropology and the broader university community.

This introduction and oral history is reprinted with permission from the University of Nevada Oral History Archive, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Nevada, Reno.

 

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