Rubie Watson's career to date has well-prepared her in many ways for serving as the first Howells Director of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

"I have always had an interest in other cultures," said Watson. She first studied archaeology and anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, as an undergraduate and then earned a master's degree in anthropology from Rice University. She received her doctorate in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, and subsequently her focus settled on the examination of family and gender relationships within Hong Kong village communities.

Before coming to Harvard in 1992 as associate curator of the Peabody and senior lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, Watson was associate professor of anthropology and acting director of the Asian Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Watson has published several books, including a detailed ethnography entitled Inequality Among Brothers: Class and Kinship in South China (1985). She is the editor of Memory, History, and Opposition under State Socialism (1994) and the co-editor of Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society (1990) and Harmony and Counterpoint: Ritual Music in Chinese Context (1996). Currently, she is working on a book focusing on the 1997 transition from British to Chinese rule in Hong Kong.

She was named associate director of the Peabody Museum in 1995.

Viewing museums as windows onto other cultures

About 10 years ago, while stopping by the newly erected Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., Watson was struck by the outpouring of grief and emotion among fellow visitors standing before the wall listing the names of the war dead.

"I became interested in how people use memorials, graves, documents, objects -- and museums -- to connect with the past in a very personal way," she recalled. "Societies and governments transform spaces for their particular purposes and those places thus reflect much about a culture and its people."

In one project, Watson explored how the Chinese use palaces built by rulers of previous regimes to create museums that glorify the Communist government. In a complementary study, she has observed in Hong Kong the emergence of museums, restoration projects, and historical preservation. "For years, Hong Kong was a community of refugees, or children of refugees, who thought of it as a way station. Now people regard the place as home and thus are undertaking these historical projects, establishing monuments, and taking pride in a unique Hong Kong history and culture," said Watson.

She is also continuing her research on women's roles in Hong Kong village communities. With a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies/Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, Watson spent most of 1996-1997 in Hong Kong exploring the shifts in relationships between husbands and wives and between parents and children as Hong Kongers increasingly focus on nuclear family arrangements. Remarking on the most obvious change, she said: "Grandparents used to be at the center of the family but now children have captured that position."

At the Peabody Museum, Watson is directing part of her efforts toward defining what she calls the "biography of a thing." She explained: "By using the Peabody's extensive archives, photographic collections, and vital records, we can attain new understandings of museum objects. Writing an object's biography involves a complicated process of contextualization: how was the object made, used, collected, conserved, displayed, researched, reused. An artifact does not -- should not -- die when it enters the museum."

Watson collaborated with Castle McLaughlin, Hrdy Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Peabody, on an online Museum exhibition, "The Ethnology of Lewis and Clark: Native American Objects and the American Quest for Commerce and Science." The exhibition's introduction explains that the objects "provide valuable evidence of the material culture of many Native American tribal groups and serve as a valuable lens through which to investigate the history of early ethnographic collecting, display, and museum building in the United States."

Watson adds: "By analyzing these objects, we find out much about Americans' views of Native Americans and the American West in the early part of the nineteenth century."

One of her goals as the Howells Director is to develop a series of temporary exhibits on parts of the collection ranging from African masks to North American baskets. "The Museum has excellent permanent exhibits, but there are so many other objects we want to share that are not currently on display," she said.

According to Watson, the complex of museums that encompasses the Peabody, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Mineralogical and Geological Museum, and the Botanical Museum attracts an impressive number of visitors. Each year, more than 120,000 people come to these institutions -- now grouped together as Harvard's Museum of Cultural and Natural History.

Another of Watson's goals is to expand the opportunities for undergraduates to pursue their own research at the Museum. Former directors David Pilbeam and Irven De Vore, both of whom are now full-time teaching in the Department of Anthropology, were concerned to find ways of involving students in the exhibits and collections. Undergraduates work with faculty and Museum staff on special independent studies, focusing, perhaps, on a special collection for a semester and then writing a research paper, gallery guide, or senior thesis. "We have found that they particularly like the hands-on aspects of their studies here and we are looking for new ways to enhance that experience," concluded Watson.

Pilbeam added: "With the new endowment, Harvard is not limited to choosing a member of the senior tenured faculty for the directorship -- we can hire whoever is best for the job. It is wonderful that the University has in Rubie Watson a distinguished social scientist who is enthusiastic about using the Peabody's collections and archives. I anticipate that more social and cultural anthropologists will follow her lead and embrace a Museum long appreciated by physical and biological anthropologists including Bill Howells, Irv De Vore, and myself."

 

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Copyright 1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College