Museum of Us

Yeah.

It was the San Diego Museum of Man in 1987, and it was called The Artifact Piece, and he lay naked except for a loincloth in a la- lay naked and still in a display case filled with sand and artifacts.

And this-

I-

So the study of cultures, the study of physical anthropology and forensics, anything to do with human nature has always been really very interesting to me.

But I did realize that I was not going to make much money in the anthropology field unless I was working, you know, at the Museum of Man in San Diego making minimum wage or taking on more student loan debt to get a master's and then a doctorate and doing the whole academia route.

So I started looking around about halfway through college and long story short, I was able to secure an internship with the former U.S. Customs Service that no longer exists that got rolled into Department of Homeland Security after 9-11.

And my last year and a half of college, I had this internship.

You worked in administrative and educational roles at the John Paul Getty Museum, the Skirball Cultural Center, and the Hearst Museum of Anthropology.

You also held the position of deputy director at both the Museum of Us and the Ohio History Connection, and you served on the board of Equality Ohio.

At a time when there are forces working against inclusion and equality, you're leading a museum whose goal is to be bold, activist, and non-neutral.

Ben, welcome to Museums, The Big Issues.

And because of her studies, she had enrolled at that point in the Sor- in the Sorbonne in Paris, she got very involved with a group of young resistance, and through them she was introduced to people who were connected to the museum of the, what we call in French the Musée de l'Homme.

Right, the Museum of Man.

So is that wh- how, I mean, it sounds silly in English for some reason.

So actually, Germaine Tillion coined the phrase.

And it's a beautiful thing to visit.

It's a beautiful thing to visit.

There's one in Toronto as well that they call the Museum of Man, I think.

So, and I would say that the Musée des Confluences in Lyon is also that sort of museum.