Richard Kurin

Richard Kurin (born November 27, 1950), an American cultural anthropologist, museum official and author, is the Acting Provost and Under Secretary for Museums and Research at the Smithsonian Institution. He is a key member of the senior team managing the world's largest museum and research complex with 6,500 employees and a $1.4 billion annual budget, caring for more than 139 million specimens, artifacts and artworks, working in 145 countries around the globe, hosting some 30 million visitors a year, and reaching hundreds of millions online and through the Smithsonian's educational programs and media outreach. Kurin is particularly responsible for all of the national museums, scholarly and scientific research centers, and programs spanning science, history, art and culture. Early life and career Kurin was born in New York City, spending his early childhood in the south Bronx before his family moved to Queens. He was an honor student at Bayside High School, lettering in football, and earning a Regents fellowship. He attended the State University of New York at Buffalo, and traveled to India in 1970, studying a Punjabi village and collecting artifacts for the American Museum of Natural History. He earned a B.A. in anthropology and philosophy in 1972. He then attended the University of Chicago, pursuing graduate study in anthropology and specializing in the study of South Asia. He carried out fieldwork in Pakistan over the course of several years, earning a certificate from the University of California, Berkeley for the study of Urdu and an M.A. in anthropology from the University of Chicago. He was awarded a Fulbright-Hays doctoral dissertation fellowship and a Social Science Research Council fellowship for research in Pakistan. He earned the Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1981 for a dissertation entitled Person, Family and Kin in Two Pakistani Communities. In Pakistan he also conducted contract research on indigenous farming practices for Harza Engineering and the World Bank Indus Basin Master Planning Project and taught at the University of Karachi.