Fernald leads Harvard Museums of Science and Culture

Last week Caroline Fernald began as executive director of the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. Previously, Fernald was executive director at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

“This is my fifth day on the job,” Fernald said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “I’m still visiting around and getting familiar with things.”

The HMSC requires a lot of familiarizing. Formed in 2012, it’s the coordinating body for the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University Herbaria, and the Mineralogical and Geological Museum.

The total number of items held by the HMSC institutions is in the millions. “So much of the collection, especially the scienceoriented holdings, are samples,” Fernald said. “Some of them microscopic.”

Fernald, 40, has a doctorate from the University of Oklahoma in Native American art. She taught at the university and then headed the Millicent Rogers Museum, in Taos, N.M.

To what extent has the museum world changed since she started graduate school — or has it?

“I do feel that it’s changed,” Fernald said. “On my pessimist days, I think It’s gotten 5 percent better. On optimist days, 100 percent. Right now we’re in a cultural moment where there’s a lot more of a call for accountability and transparency from museums.

“Also we’re in the middle of a massive generational shift. Younger people are calling for museums to do better and defend their value. That’s an important charge for museums to be taking on now.

Even though Fernald’s in just her second week at Harvard, she’s noticed continuities between her job at Berkeley and her new position.

“There have been a lot of things that are very similar, procedurally,” Fernald said. “But where things have differed they have been quite delightful.”

Asked for an example, she gave a surprising answer — or at least it surprised a co-worker. “I’ve been to Boston several times and said to a colleague that “People are really nice here.’ She said, ‘They are?”

Fernald succeeds Brenda Tindal, who is now the Harvard faculty of arts and sciences’ chief campus curator.