September 29, 2005
Burke names UW veteran as new director
The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture has chosen a new director who knows the museum, and the UW, very well. Julie Stein has been a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology since 1980, and spent nine years as curator of archaeology at the Burke. For the past six years, she has been divisional dean of research in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Stein assumed the Burke directorship in mid-September, succeeding Roxana Augusztiny, who had stepped in as acting director after George MacDonald retired last summer. “I’m excited to work in such a wonderful place,” she said of the job. “The research collections, exhibits and programs are all excellent.”
Stein first became involved in the Burke early in her UW career, after she started a field school and got interested in Northwest Coast archaeology. She became an adjunct curator in 1985. But it was in 1990, when she took over the curator’s role, that she really came to know the museum. At the time, she says, The Burke had a wealth of objects that had accumulated from the distinguished archaeologists who had been in the Department of Anthropology.
“Very typical of the time, archaeologists would have excavations, gather up all these objects and then write up their summary and leave the objects in the boxes,” she said. “I guess they never thought about what would happen to the objects, or they thought they’d come back and look at them again. But what really happened was they started to deteriorate.”
Then, just as Stein was taking over the curator’s position, the U.S. Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act mandating that museums examine their collections for human remains and funerary objects and notify tribes about what they had, so that tribes could reclaim them if they chose to.
Stein’s job became to sort through materials in paper bags and boxes, with accompanying notes stuffed in filing cabinets, to see just what the museum had. Partly she was conforming to the law, but partly she wanted to make more of the collection accessible to researchers. She obtained an NSF grant to help her with the work, which she called overwhelming.
But she also loved it. “I really like making order out of a mess,” she said. “I’m one of those people who loves to clean up rather than cook because I love the satisfaction of taking a really messy kitchen and in a matter of minutes making it sparkling clean. To me that’s very satisfying. So the curator role was fun for me.”
Stein moved on to Arts and Sciences in 1999 largely because she thought it was time she do some universitywide service, and she had noticed that there weren’t many women administrators.
“I was pleasantly surprised by how smart our administrators are and how hard they work, and I learned a tremendous amount about how this university operates,” she said of the position. “But my passion really is archaeology and museums and natural history and culture. Fixing other people’s problems is well and good, but I’d rather fix the problems of something I feel passionate about.”
So, when pushed to apply for the Burke job, Stein decided to take the plunge. “I love the Burke,” she said. “It has over 100 years of history here in the community and there are so many people who love it, and yet it struggles to get the funding and recognition that it deserves.”
As director, Stein will be working to conquer those problems. The Burke must upgrade its facility, she says. A recent renovation expanded the gallery space, but the museum also needs a restaurant, bigger restrooms, a bookstore, a shop that can address visitors’ questions, expanded classrooms and discovery spaces for workshops.
All that will require money, so Stein is in the process of hiring a development director who will be responsible for running a capital campaign.
Stein says she expects to spend a lot of time talking up the Burke with anyone who will listen. ” I love to teach,” she said. “Last spring I won the Distinguished Teaching Award and this fall I take a job where my teaching is going to be reduced. And that upset me until I realized that the Burke is all about teaching. It’s just a different kind of teaching. Instead of students in a classroom, it’s the citizens of Washington. And I’m excited about that.”
