Lambert-Karlovsky to Assume Peabody Museum Directorship

C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, curator of Near Eastern Archeology at the Peabody Museum and professor of Anthropology, will take over as director of the Peabody Museum on July 1, replacing Stephen Williams, Peabody Professor of American Archeology and Ethnology, the University announced yesterday.

The newly-elected director said he plans to classify the museum's objects in a much more specific fashion. He added that he intends to increase attention devoted to the preservation of the museum's collection because the acquisition of new specimens has become increasingly difficult.

Lamberg-Karlovsky said yesterday that he approaches his new appointment with "a degree of trepidation." He has reservations about sacrificing time which he now devotes to research in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Lamberg-Karlovsky said Williams "completely turned the museum around" and called Williams's performance a "difficult show to follow."

Williams, who has held the directorship for ten years, "was the turning point in terms of the Peabody Museum," Russel J. Barber, a teaching fellow of North American archeological studies, said yesterday.

Stabilizer

Barber added that Williams stabilized finances, improved laboratories, and established the Tozzer Library. The library's anthropological collection is one of the largest in the United States.

Thomas W. Beale '71, one of Lamberg-Karlovsky's teaching fellows, said the future director is "imaginative and innovative--he's the whole reason I'm in the field."