The Kelsey Museum staff extends its warmest welcome to Sebastián Encina, our new Coordinator of Museum Collections. Among the primary responsibilities of Sebastián’s new position is facilitating classroom use of Kelsey objects. In this capacity he has already enjoyed meeting with Curator Elaine Gazda’s “Hellenistic and Roman Sculpture” class. He has also taken over management of the Museum’s collections database and has begun restructuring and updating it. In addition, Sebastián is designing a study area—which will extend along the Kelsey’s third-floor loft—equipped to allow students and researchers to access the collections database, burn CDs, and digitize images.
Before Sebastián’s arrival, Curator of Slides and Photographs Robin Meador-Woodruff, recently assisted by Kate Carras, worked alone in the Kelsey registry, ably keeping track of every item in the Museum. Yet Robin has insisted for years that an additional registry position was mandatory to sustain the level of services the Museum is committed to offering. Needless to say, she, like all the other curators, was relieved when the appointment was finally authorized and delighted when Sebastián arrived to fill it.
Sebastián comes to his new position well prepared in both archaeology and collections management. Born in Chile, he grew up in Rochester, New York, where he received a BA from St. John Fisher College. He also holds an MA in Anthropology, with a concentration in Museum Training, from the George Washington University.
In 1997 Sebastián participated in archaeological fieldwork in Ukraine. He then took a job in Rochester at the George Eastman House—a historic home that also serves as a photography museum. There he catalogued precinematic equipment, including such curiosities as magic lanterns and megalethoscopes, before becoming assistant archivist in the Technology Department. Most recently, Sebastián worked at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, transforming archaeological records for a new database system and cataloguing artifacts of the Olmec, a pre-Columbian culture in Mexico and Central America.
When not at his computer in the Kelsey registry, Sebastián enjoys traveling and photography. Some of his photographs have been exhibited at a Washington Barnes & Noble bookstore.
