University of Delaware Office of Public Relations The Messenger Vol. 5, No. 1/1995 Conservator places Native American artifacts in their cultural context Marian Kaminitz, Delaware '84M, spends a good bit of her time these days fine-tuning details for a move that won't take place until after the turn of the century. But then, who can blame her? She's preparing almost 1 million items for shipment from New York City to Washington, D.C. Luckily, the Delaware graduate won't be packing-and isn't planning-the move alone. Kaminitz, who received a master's degree in art conservation from Delaware, heads the eight-person conservation department for the National Museum of the American Indian, part of the Smithsonian Institution. The museum, with three branches in New York City, is scheduled to move in 2001 to a new home next to the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, where it will sit on the Mall at the foot of the nation's Capitol. The National Museum of the American Indian boasts one of the world's finest collections of Native American artifacts. One- third of the museum's staff is Native American. "We work in collaboration and cooperation with Native American peoples," Kaminitz says. "This museum is setting forth objects and cultures from the eyes of Native Americans." The goal is for the public to understand that these cultures still thrive, she explains, and "we want to allow visitors to see those cultures from the native viewpoint rather than as an interpretation made by anthropologists, scientists and scholars." Kaminitz has bachelor's degrees in art history and home economics from the University of Tennessee and a bachelor of fine arts degree and a certificate in gallery management from the California College of Arts and Crafts. She says she chose a career in conservation because she enjoys working with artifacts and teaching people about the preservation of materials. Kaminitz selected Delaware's three-year conservation program because of its emphasis on textile materials and objects; its association with the Henry Francis duPont Winterthur Museum; and its proximity to Washington and New York. After a one-year fellowship at the Pacific Regional Conservation Center in Hawaii, Kaminitz took a job as the assistant objects conservator in the anthropology department at the American Museum of Natural History. She joined the National Museum of the American Indian six years later. During her career, Kaminitz traveled to Ankara, Turkey, serving as a conservator on a project that dealt with the conservation, restoration, recording and rehousing of furniture found in a Phrygian tomb. For two summers in the mid '80s, she also worked as an on-site conservator, concentrating on the treatment and registration of finds from the excavation of two areas at an archaeological Roman site in Episkopi, Cyprus. She has been in her current job since 1991 and was attracted to the museum because its philosophy mirrors her own belief that people within a culture should be the ones who represent it. A Mamaroneck, N.Y., resident, Kaminitz received a 1995 UD Presidential Citation for Outstanding Achievement for her efforts to bring a new awareness of cultural context to the field of conservation. Authenticity comes, in part, from knowing what information to offer, she says. "I've learned to respect that everything is not meant to be shared. Knowledge is not wholesale information." Kaminitz' belief that people must "allow others to take responsibility for their own things" influences her personal life, too. She is coordinator of the New York chapter of the Foundation of I Inc., a non-profit educational organization that teaches a spiritual, stress-release process called Hooponopono. The Hawaiian name of the process means to create freedom, to rectify an error, Kaminitz says. "It's all about taking responsibility for yourself through a process of repentance, forgiveness and transmutation. It's about unifying one's inner family with the divine creator to allow stressful things to be released. "It all fits together for me-the sensibility of native people to their culture is lined up with how I feel in general. Conservation is part of that, of being able to know where preservation is important," she says. "It is important for people to understand that sometimes things should be repatriated back to a tribe and used by the tribe. It's also about knowing that you have to let go of some materials." The number of visitors to the museum in New York City has increased substantially since November, when the main exhibit was moved to the Old Custom House in downtown Manhattan. Kaminitz says she is proud of the museum's exhibits as well as its internship program that trains Native Americans in conservation. One of the goals of the museum is to help break the stereotypes people hold about Native Americans. "There's a misunderstanding that all Native Americans come from the plains and that they all look like Tonto," Kaminitz says. "There are too many stereotypes. That is changing, but there's more that can be done." -Marylee Sauder, Delaware '83