Mari Lyn Salvador, the former director of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a long-time faculty member at the University of New Mexico, died late last month in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was 77 years old.
Professor Salvador spent much of her adult life conducting research on textiles in the San Blas Islands of Panama and the Azores Islands of Portugal. She was the author of the book The Art of Being Kuna: Layers of Meaning Among the Kuna of Panama (University of California Press, 1997).
Dr. Salvador earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in anthropology and a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology, all from the University of California, Berkeley. She also studied art at San Francisco State University and served in the Peace Corps.
Before becoming director of the Hearst Museum at Berkeley, Dr. Salvador spent much of her career at the University of New Mexico. She was hired in 1978 as an assistant professor of anthropology and was eventually promoted to full professor in 1999. For more than a quarter century, she served as the chief curator of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. From 1988 to 1992, Dr. Salvador also served as associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the university.