Elaine Charnov (NYU Anthropology and Culture & Media MA ’94) has dedicated her career to working at the nexus of art, science, history and public culture. She is currently the Senior Vice President of Exhibits, Education & Programs at the Intrepid Museum in New York City.
At the New York Public Library, she spearheaded the acclaimed “Lunch Hour NYC” exhibit, which celebrated the library’s world-class menu collection. For nineteen years, Elaine worked at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and directed the Margaret Mead Film Festival, founding their high school program and national and international traveling film festival, traveling the globe to identify films and conduct workshops at universities and cultural centers.
She also directed the museum’s programs division and introduced the popular “Art/Sci Collision” series featuring such talents as Nam June Paik in collaboration with his physician to explore the “thermography of pain.” In 2007, the New York Times profiled Elaine’s trailblazing work at AMNH. At NYU, Elaine’s master’s thesis explored the “lost” films of pioneering anthropologist, folklorist, performer Zora Neale Hurston, which she published in 1998.
Interviewer Melissa Lefkowitz is a filmmaker, doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology at NYU, and graduate of the Program in Culture & Media.
Melissa Lefkowitz: What brought you to the Culture and Media Program?
Elaine Charnov: In truth, I was a total film culture nerd prior to the program. Even in high school, I was reading about people like Margaret Mead and I was really interested in international photojournalism. A lot of seeds were planted by the time I was a teenager. I ended up going to Barnard [College] and volunteering at the American Museum of Natural History both for the [Margaret Mead Film] Festival, starting in 1982, and also working in their burgeoning film archive. At that point, [the museum] didn't even have a formal archive. There were just lots of historic films that, crazily enough, were stored in the mammalogy freezers. They thought – at the time – keeping them cold was a way of [preventing] 16 and 35 [mm] films from deterioration. It's so not best practices, but in the ‘80s there was still so little knowledge.
My hunger and passion for the intersection of global culture, cinema, and museums were already deep and established by the early ‘80s. [In 1984], I attended the Harvard [University] summer program. They used to offer an ethnographic film intensive. I went to experience the amazing Jean Rouch. That summer he never showed up for the course, because he was deeply immersed in a film project [Dionysos]. Instead, Ricky Leacock and Tim Asch taught the summer course. It set the stage for learning about the history of ethnographic film, and I just got obsessed. That was the basis for wanting to dive even deeper. It was not clear if it would be on an academic pathway or on how to apply the thinking, the tools, in non-academic ways. That’s really what set the stage and planted the seed for my arrival at the Culture and Media Program, which was still in its early years. I started the program in 1988. Back in the day, you applied to get your MA and then after that would apply for the PhD. They were very generous at that time. They offered scholarships and fellowships at the master’s level, so that was another compelling reason why I certainly wanted to attend.
ML: What drove you to the next phase of your career and how did you break into the field?
EC: It wasn't so much a breaking into the field; there was a kind of parallel track. After the first year, I was very slow earning my master’s because I got full-time employment. I’d already been affiliated as a volunteer with the Mead Festival. A position opened up in 1989, and I applied for it and got the job. I started working as a coordinator at the Mead Festival that year. So, I was working at the museum by day and taking courses [at night] – at the time all of the courses were in the evening – and trying to balance the two.
While I was still committed to the master's program, I was also committed to working. I don't think I received my degree until ’94. I think that's an issue for academic programs where you need to illustrate to deans and institutions that you're perpetuating the field and your students are working at a dynamic pace…I started some coursework beyond the master’s, but then I got very interested in public culture and connecting these themes and concepts in spheres beyond academia.