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Associate Director of Museum of Anthropology

Chief Mungo Martin or Nakapenkem (lit. Potlatch chief "ten times over"), Datsa (lit. "grandfather"), was an important figure in Northwest Coast style art, specifically that of the Kwakwaka'wakw Aboriginal people who live in the area of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. He was a major contributor to Kwakwaka'wakw art, especially in the realm of wood sculpture and painting. He was also known as a singer and songwriter.

Mungo Martin was an important figure in the early history of the Museum of Anthropology. In 1950 and 1951 he worked for the University of British Columbia restoring and carving totem poles. These later stood in Totem Park at UBC and some were later moved into the great hall in the Museum of Anthropology. After this time he is best known for his work at Thunderbird Park in Victoria, where he helped to carve many of the totem poles and house posts that now stand in the park. He worked with several artists who became well-known including Bill Reid, Doug Cranmer, and Henry Hunt.

Blanca Muratorio is a Professor Emeritus in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Originally from Argentina, Blanca Muratorio received her Ph.D. at U.C.-Berkeley in 1972 and later moved to Vancouver to join the faculty of Anthropology at UBC. Her ethnographic area of focus is Latin America. Her research interests include Anthropology and History, visual anthropology, oral histories, Amazonian societies, women in the Third World, religion and ethnicity. Her publications include “The Life and Times of Grandfather Alonso, Culture and History in the Upper Amazon”, “Protestantism and Capitalism Revisited, in the Rural Highlands of Ecuador”, “Protestantism, Ethnicity, and Class in Chimborazo”, “Indigenous Women’s Identities and the Politics of Cultural Reproduction in the Ecuadorian Amazon”, “Rucuyaca Alonso y la Historia Social y económica del Alto Napo: 1850-1950.” Now retired, she recently returned to live in Argentina with her husband Ricardo.

Ricardo Muratorio is a Professor Emeritus in Sociology at the University of British Columbia. Originally from Argentina, Ricardo Muratorio received his MA at U.C.-Berkeley in the 1970s and later moved to Vancouver to join the faculty of the Anthropology-Sociology Department at UBC. He is now retired, and recently returned to live in Argentina with his wife Blanca. Ricardo Muratorio has published a number of works including “A Feast of Color, Corpus Christi Dance Costumes of Ecuador: From the Olga Fisch Collection” in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institute.

In 2010, Blanca Muratorio donated over 200 objects to the Museum of Anthropology’s Multiversity Gallery.

Nadia Abu-Zahra was appointed an anthropologist in the Anthropology/Sociology Department of the University of British Columbia by Director Cyril Belshaw in the late 1960s or early 1970s. She graduated from Oxford with a PhD in social anthropology, and later lived and taught at Oxford.

Although NEC (formerly Native Education Centre) had existed since 1967, it was in 1979 that the society was formed to assume control and broaden the scope of education to include academic post-secondary courses. The school moved into its current facilities in 1985, a building featuring architectural features of a traditional Pacific Coast longhouse.

Noah Shakspeare was a photographer, politician, labourer, activist, and civil servant. He was born on January 26, 1839 in Brierley Hill, England, son of Noah Shakespeare and Hannah Matthews. He married Eliza Jane Pearson on December 26, 1859, and they had seven children, of whom three sons and one daughter survived infancy. He and his family moved to Victoria, where he took up a career as a photographer from 1864 to the 1870s. He was elected and served as mayor of Victoria, B. C. in 1882 - 1888. He died on May 13, 1921 in Victoria.

Nuno Porto is originally from Portugal. He was trained has a social anthropologist. He did long term fieldwork in Central Portugal in the early 1990s, studying the relationships between literacy skills acquisition and gendered cultural knowledges. The coexistence of literate and oral rationalities in rural Portugal fueled interests in visual culture and on how religious experience is mediated by visual and material culture. The universe of visual theory and material culture studies was to become the center of his subsequent work related to museums. His PhD dissertation explored the articulation of colonialism, science, and museum culture, and how these merged in the co-development of the Dundo Museum in Northeast of Angola and of its proprietor, the Diamonds Company of Angola. This dissertation received the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation award for the Social and Human Sciences Thesis and was published by the same foundation in 2009.

Between 2006 and 2012 he integrated the Commission for the Re-opening of the Dundo Museum, led by the Ministry of Culture of Angola that successfully concluded its works in 2012. During this period he also led a team that developed and implemented the website on the archival materials of the Diamonds Company of Angola held at the University of Coimbra, www.diamangdigital.net. He was also a member of the research team for the project ‘Bearing Waters’ led by Lisbon sculptor Virginia Fróis, on the renewal of traditional Cape Verdean women ceramics.

Between 1991 and 2011 he taught at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, on subjects related to theory in social anthropology, material culture, critical museology, visual culture, photography and African studies. His work has been published in four different languages in eight different countries. He coordinated the Graduate Program in Social and Cultural Anthropology between 2006 and 2011, and also taught in the Graduate Program on Design and Multimedia. He acted as director of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Coimbra between 2002 and 2006, where his team developed a series of temporary exhibitions based on the notion of ethnographic installation.

In 2013 he was Invited Professor at the Post Graduate Program in Social Memory at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro - UNIRIO, in Brazil.

Porto currently serves as curator for Africa and South America at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Museum of Anthropology. He has been at UBC since 2012.

Pam Brown was a curator in the Pacific Northwest Department of the UBC Museum of Anthropology (MOA), where she was responsible for the Heiltsuk, Wuikinuxv, Tahltan, Ktunaxa, Tsilhqot'in, and Tlingit collections. She has curated and co-curated a number of exhibits at MOA including ‘Mehodihi: Well-Known Traditions of Tahltan People’ (2003) and ‘Telling Our Stories, A Profile of Tahltan/Tlingit Artist Dempsey Bob’ (2001). She has worked closely with the Heiltsuk community on many projects and has contributed to the creation of a number of MOA sourcebooks, including ‘The Honor of One is the Honor of All’ (1996-2005) and ‘My Ancestors Are Still Dancing’ (2003).

Brown graduated with a Master of Arts degree from the University of British Columbia in 1994, having written a thesis and curated an exhibit at MOA entitled ‘Cannery Days: A Chapter In The Lives of the Heiltsuk,’ about the lives of Heiltsuk men and women in the BC fish processing industry. In 1994-1995 she was involved with the design and implementation of the Aboriginal Museum Internship Program (AMIP) and the Aboriginal Cultural Stewardship Program (ACSP) at MOA, two programs which provided native participants with practical training in how to develop low-cost, effective displays and resource materials on cultural subjects for their communities. In 1999, Brown coordinated a ‘Repatriation Forum’ which brought 180 First Nations members and museum professionals to UBC’s First Nations House of Learning to discuss the shared experiences of repatriation between First Nations in B.C. and tribes from the USA. Since 1999, Brown has also acted as supervisor of the Native Youth Programme.

Brown retired from MOA in the summer of 2020.

No biographical information available.

Percy Broughton was a missionary of the Anglican Church who served the Church Missionary Society (predecessor to the Anglican Church in the Arctic) at Lake Harbour [Kimmirut, Baffin Island] from 1911-1912. Prior to this, Broughton attended the theological school Wycliffe College in Toronto, Ontario. Broughton arrived in Lake Harbour in September of 1911. In March of 1912, he was separated from the Inuit crew he was travelling with, and spent two days lost in the Arctic. He eventually managed to find his way to a small community of Inuit who saved his life though he sustained serious injuries due to prolonged exposure in extreme cold temperatures. He left Lake Harbour in August of 1912. Broughton returned to Toronto for surgeries and recuperation, then went to England, New Zealand, and Australia. Broughton died, most likely due to complications from his injuries, in September of 1915.

The purpose of this committee, as with all other UBC Planning Coordinating Committees, was to consider all of the interests involved in the development of the new building for the Museum of Anthropology. The Committee was formed to ensure that balanced recommendations, taking into account the overall interests of the University, could be made to the President. Committee members participated in defining terms of construction, operation, and maintenance of the museum, including choosing the architect, deciding location, and securing funds for the continuing operation of the building.

The development and construction of the museum was, in part, made possible by a federal grant, Canada’s 1971 Centennial Gift to the people of British Columbia. The University’s Senate Committee on Academic Building Needs recognized the need for a new museum, linked to the department of Anthropology and Sociology. In 1971 the President’s Planning and Coordinating Committee was formed by then University President Walter Gage to assist in the planning and construction of the Museum of Man building (now known as the Museum of Anthropology, changed in March 1973), and the new facility in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology.

Dean of Arts, Douglas T. Kenny, chaired this committee. Other members included Dr. Michael Ames, Mrs. Audrey Hawthorn, and Dr. Harry Hawthorn, among others (Wilson Duff, Marjorie Halpin, Ingeborg Ruus, Audrey Shane, Gloria Webster.)

Audrey Hawthorn, as the Museum of Anthropology first official Curator, was the person initially responsible for Public Programming and Education. In Hawthorn’s time the function involved mainly exhibitions and the programs surrounding them, as well as raising the profile of the museum. When plans for a new building got underway more formal programming guidelines were developed. A Museum Programming Committee was formed in 1971, charged with the function of suggesting programmes for the new museum, which was at this time still in the planning phase. Along with other museum committees, this committee was given the task of developing programming ideas to help dictate the needs of the new building. Their mandate was to establish policy guidelines for museum programming.

In 1974 the Museum Public Programming Committee decided on two spheres of programming: academic and public programmes. Since this time, these functions have been shared by different positions with various titles. These position titles include Extension Curator, Education Curator, Museum Programme Coordinator, Public Programming Coordinator and Curator of Public Programmes.

Individuals that have been involved in these functions were often employed full time in the Museum, while others were employed part-time as museum curators and part-time as professors in the Department of Anthropology. These curators have traditionally had a very fluid function and their roles have included many additional responsibilities outside of public programming and education. These individuals include:

-Audrey Hawthorn, Curator (1947-1977)
-Elvi Whittaker, Coordinator of Public Programming (1973-1976)
-Hindaleah (Hindy) Ratner, Extension Curator (1978-1995) (on leave May -October 1984, January-July 1985, and September 1986-February 1987)
-Madeline Bronsdon Rowan, Curator of Ethnology and Public Programming and professor of Anthropology (April 1977-December 1986) (on leave 1979 and 1986)
-Margaret Stott, Curator of Ethnology and Education, and Professor of Anthropology (1979-1990)
-Roberta Kremer, Acting Education Curator (July 1989-June 1991) Acting Curator of Education and Volunteer Coordinator (1990-1991) Acting Education/Public Programming Curator (while Jill Baird was on leave January 2007- January 2008)
-Louise Jackson, Curator of Ethnology and Education (July 1991-1995) (on leave 1993-1995)
-Rosa Ho, Curator of Art and Public Programming (January 1988-1999) Curator of Art and Public Programming and Education (1992, 1996-1999)
-Jill Baird, Education/Public Programming Curator (March 1999-present) (on leave January 2007-January 2008)

Graduate students Margaret Holm and Susan Hull coordinated extension duties and programmes in Rowan and Ratners' absence in 1986 and 1987. There was no official replacement for the Extension or Education Curators during the absence of Rowan and Ratner nor with their resignations in 1986. This continued until Rosa Ho was appointed as the full-time Curator of Art and Public Programming in January 1988. She added Education Curator to her title in 1992 and again after the departure of Jackson in 1996. She held the position of Curator of Art, Public Programming and Education until she left in 1999.

Jill Baird took over the position of Education/Public Programming Curator in March 1999. This new position included the majority of the functions of the Art and Public Programming Curator, as well as the traditional functions of both the Extension and Education Curator and some additional responsibilities.

The function of Public Programming and Education has traditionally been responsible for exhibitions, education, public programs, and extension activities at the Museum of Anthropology. The primary function of this area was to locate cultures within the world context of art, to prepare exhibits, including travelling exhibits, to enhance cultural understanding and enjoyment of cultural diversity, and to cut across the disciplinary boundaries of art history, anthropology, and archaeology. These functions were developed in particular ways for specialized audiences through Exhibitions, Education, Public Programmes, and Extension activities.

The Education function has included establishing and supervising school programmes for students and teachers, and training members of the Volunteer Associates to conduct these programmes. Programmed activities included orientation walks, self-guided visits to the museum, cultural performances, and a variety of participatory sessions designed to complement the school curriculum, this included the development of units of curriculum and "touchable" artifact kits. School artifact kits included specially designed information and artifacts that were packaged and lent out to British Columbia schools to further anthropological education outside of the museum setting. The education programming also provided professional development workshops for teachers and students.

Public Programmes included artists' talks and panel discussions, storytelling, music, performances, workshops, lectures, non-credit courses, museum tours, identification clinics and audio-visual presentations.

Extension activities included the loaning out of exhibit materials and creation of travelling exhibitions. This included coordinating the development of in-house exhibitions, special events and lectures in conjunction with exhibits, exhibits in office spaces, and installations in off-campus locations.

The Museum's current public programming mandate, as of 1999, seeks to provide a forum for cultural expression, experimentation, and exchange of views. This is done through a variety of programs, including public talks, demonstration, guided gallery tours, lectures, hands-on workshops, artist talks, music, performances, film viewing and educational programs.

The Museum's current educational programming mandate is to develop and deliver quality programs to elementary and secondary school students that introduces them to other cultures and makes innovative use of the Museum's collections, exhibitions, and other resources. These programs include elementary and secondary classes, special programs developed in conjunction with temporary exhibitions, the Musqueam School, and summer day camps. Many of the educational programs are jointly developed with artists and other institutions.