CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Museum of Natural History has added two anthropologists considered to be rising stars in their industry as part of a new transformation campaign.
Standing in a Cleveland Museum of Natural History exhibit, Anthropologist Dr. Emma Finestone showed the history of human evolution, which she said she has been studying for years.
“What’s really exciting to me about the field of human evolution is that it connects humans and it connects myself to the rest of the natural world. That, I was always very interested in,” Finestone said. “I took a few classes in college about human evolution and primates and that’s how I really got started towards this line of work.”
Growing up in Boston, Finestone said she has traveled all over the world, including Western Kenya, where she worked on surveys to look for ancient stone tools and fossilized animal bones.
She has studied how homonyms were moving around their environment. She said she’s now bringing her experiences to the museum as part of a $150 million transformation campaign.
Finestone will help advance the anthropological program and help visitors understand the connection between the human past and our lives today.
“It’s really important to show that it’s not just that humans are connected to the natural world through our many ancestors and relatives that lived in the past, but we’re also connected to the natural world through living primates and all other animals,” said Finestone.
The museum said the campaign will transform its building, exhibits, education programs and community engagement. Dr. Gavin Svenson said this is a way to help those who come to the museum better understand our past, which can hold valuable information for the future.
“Why is it important to us? Because we interact with the world on a day-to-day basis. The environment that we’re in is critically important for us to understand and what our future is,” Svenson said. “And when we can connect early origins of humans and ancestors and early origins of human species themselves, understanding better about how they adapted and interacted and negotiated the environment, [it] tells us a lot about what our own future can be.”
Finestone and Dr. Elizabeth Sawchuck are two women who are helping to diversify a field traditionally dominated by white men. Finestone said she sees things moving in the right direction.
“We see with this next generation that there’s a lot more diversity coming forward which is incredibly important for not only telling human origins but also the research and the questions that we’re asking,” said Finestone. “There needs to be a diverse group of people doing that research.”
