About
Associate Director, Senior Curator of Musical Instruments and Professor of Music, National Music Museum & Center for Study of the History of Musical Instruments, The University of South Dakota. 1978-present.
Responsibilities include: overseeing care and academic interpretation of objects, materials, and specimens belonging to the Museum; cataloging of museum collections, including scholarly determination of classification, dating, and provenance; conducting research about the Museum’s collections and publishing the results of that research; conducting research that will lead to the discovery of new knowledge or new applications of existing knowledge; teaching graduate-level courses in the history and technology of musical instruments (for unique M.M. degree with specialization in the history of musical instruments) and Museum Studies; and creation, development, and maintenance of website.
Specialist in 19th-20th-century American Musical Instrument Manufacturing, particularly the C. G. Conn company of Elkhart, Indiana, and other Midwestern musical instrument manufacturers.
Education
Ph.D. in musicology, minor in anthropology, West Virginia University (Morgantown). Dissertation: “The Rebec: An Orthographic and Iconographic Study,” 1981.
M.A. in musicology with emphasis in ethnomusicology and organology, State University of New York at Binghamton. Thesis: “The Modern Greek Lyra: An Organological Study of the Lyra Collection of Sam Chianis, Binghamton, New York,” 1974.
B.S. in Music Education, Summa Cum Lauda, Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, New York), 1972. Several undergraduate courses taken at Colgate University (Hamilton, New York), through collaborative exchange program with Skidmore College, 1970-1972.
