Winifred Needler

Winifred Needler DCL (June 14, 1904 – September 5, 1987) was a German-born Canadian Egyptologist at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology, where she rose to be keeper of the Near Eastern Collections and later curator of the Egyptian Department. She also taught at the University of Toronto. Early life and education Winifred Ellen Needler was born in Weimar, Germany, to Mary Winifred (Chisholm) Needler and George Henry Needler, a professor of German at the University of Toronto. She was known to family and friends as 'Friedel' or 'Friedl'. She was educated at St. Margaret's College and Oakwood Collegiate Institute, following which she got her B.A. in modern languages and philosophy at University College, Toronto. She then spent a year studying art at the Ontario College of Art. In 1928 she moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to study at the School of Fine Arts and Crafts, where she won a number of prizes for her artwork. Career For five years Needler struggled to make a living as a commercial artist, but this eventually proved impossible during the Great Depression. In 1935, she got a job as a draftsperson and cataloguer at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology, drawing specimens for the museum's card system. She became increasingly interested in the Egyptian collection and began to concentrate on it. In 1938, she was awarded a Carnegie Fellowship that allowed her to take a leave of absence from the museum and study at Yale University. During her year at Yale, she studied with Michael Rostovtzeff, Cornelius Osgood, and Ludlow Bull. She could not stay to complete the two-year master's degree, although Rostovtzeff argued that a paper she wrote for him on Ptolemaic sculpture was so good that it should be accepted as a master's thesis. She received her M.A. in 1961 from the University of Toronto. On her return to Canada in 1939, Needler undertook a systematic organization and classification of the museum's extensive collection of Near Eastern antiquities, many collected by then-director Charles Trick Currelly. After holding various positions in the museum, in 1951 she was appointed to a top curatorial post as keeper of the Near Eastern Collections. She helped to expand the museum's holdings of artefacts from the Near East. A decade later, when the museum decided to split the Near Eastern Collections in two, she was appointed curator of the half that was named the Egyptian Department.