Claudine Gay, Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, recently announced the appointment of Brenda Tindal as the next Executive Director of the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture (HMSC).
The HMSC partnership was established in 2012 to develop a strong, coordinated face for the four public-facing Faculty of Arts and Sciences museums at Harvard: the Harvard Museum of Natural History, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, and the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.
The appointment of Tindal to the role reinforces the HMSC’s mission to provide meaningful and inclusive experiences to the broad public with the goal of supporting lifelong learning.
Tindal most recently served as the Founding Director of Education and Engagement at the International African American Museum (IAAM) in Charleston, South Carolina. Under her leadership the museum launched an inaugural education program. Prior to IAAM, she served as Director of Education at the Detroit Historical Society during the start of its widely acclaimed Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward exhibition and community-engagement initiative. In 2020, she received the Museum Leadership Award from the Southeastern Museum Conference (SEMC) for service leadership and innovative practice.
She also served as Staff Historian and Senior Vice President of research and collections at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was the first woman and first African American in that role. During her tenure at the Levine, she helped curate the 2017 project K(NO)W Justice K(NO)W Peace, one of the first exhibitions in the country to show community law-enforcement relations in a historical and socio-cultural context; and Courage: The Carolina Story That Changed America, which explored the region’s role in the landmark school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In 2005 the museum was awarded the National Medal for Museum Service, the nation’s highest honor given to museums and libraries.
