by Darlene Lizarraga, director of marketing
June 2025
Diane with an assortment of miniatures in 2010.
Diane Dittemore, associate curator of ethnology, is retiring after 46 years of service.
In my meager 26 years at ASM, I can honestly say that I’ve never heard Diane say no to any event, exhibit, class, tour, or presentation that was aimed at sharing ASM’s collections with the public. No viable opportunity is ever willingly declined. Weekdays, weekends, in-house, off-site, in-person, on video, or social media—the answer has always been yes.
Since 1979, Diane’s purview has been the ethnological collections—objects dating from 1540 to today. While her focus is Southwest Native cultural arts, “her” collections include thousands of objects from around the globe. Nevertheless, whether it’s a Yavapai basket or a Chinese silk robe, her mission has always been the same—she has wanted you to see it and learn about it.
Diane is herself as accessible as she wishes the collections to be. Her office door is never closed. It’s ajar just enough to give her some privacy, but also enough to say, “I’m here and I’m available.”
Diane amid folkart collections in 2004.
It all Started with a Fiddle
In 1978, Diane received an MA in anthropology from the University of Denver with a focus on Native American material culture and museum studies. As part of her graduate thesis research on Western Apache one-stringed fiddles, she came to Tucson to examine the instruments at ASM where she learned that the Comcaac (Seri) made comparable fiddles. A year later, she conducted fieldwork among the Seri of coastal Sonora, with her future husband, Seth Schindler, who was a curator at ASM just finishing his PhD. In 1979, she landed her first post-graduate job as an acting curator at ASM when Seth took a leave of absence for a year’s residency at the School of American Research (now the School for Advanced Research). It turned out to be the only job she would ever apply for, as ASM offered her a permanent position when Seth resigned to pursue other opportunities. “It was the Apache fiddles that brought me here and almost 50 years later, I’m still here.”
Dittemore first held curatorial positions as a member of the classified staff before becoming a member of the faculty in 2008, receiving tenure in 2014.
“From the very beginning my career has paralleled the trends, theory, and practice in the field of museology. Better storage and collections management were a strong push in the 80s, so I worked on several major grants to rehouse collections into proper cabinetry. Also, between 1979 and 1982, ASM accessioned more than 5,000 new ethnological objects that were the result of a number of significant purchases on behalf of ASM by the University of Arizona Foundation, at the direction of University of Arizona president John Schaefer. My first 15 years were therefore mostly spent on cataloging and putting objects in upgraded storage.
Diane has had a phenomenal impact on ASM during her tenure. Her passionate drive to share ASM’s collections with researchers, students, and the general public has resulted in an impressive list of contributions in the areas of research and creative activities, service, and public outreach but nothing so impactful as her co-creation of the Friends of the ASM Collections and her stewardship of this group over the past 20 years. --Patrick D. Lyons, ASM Director
ASM hosted major displays of these new acquisitions, including an exhibit of Tarahumara culture, Los de la Sierra: Tarahumara Indians of Chihuahua (1977-1983), and a 1982 exhibit of Mexican masks and costumes from the Donald and Dorothy Cordry Collection, guest curated by James S. Griffith and Laurel Cooper. My curatorial contributions to these exhibits were in support capacities. By the late 1980s, my time was increasingly devoted to curating exhibits. Yet I continued to collaborate on significant storage upgrades, most notably of pottery and basketry collections led by our then-conservator Dr. Nancy Odegaard.”
Exhibits and Teamwork
Diane was lead curator or co-curator of many, many more exhibits, large and small, permanent and temporary, including, Paths of Life: American Indians of the Southwest, The Pottery Project, Basketry Treasured, and Woven Through Time: Native Treasures of Basketry and Fiber Arts.
Diane showing beaded Plains items in 2013.
Retired archivist Alan Ferg recalls, “Diane was one of a stable and long-lived Collections Division crew that worked together on whatever exhibit was going up or project that needed doing. People who all knew their collections and their jobs inside and out, cross-trained, and willing to help with whatever needed doing and all happy to do public outreach. It was a great group to work with.”
Always eager to capitalize on new ways to share collections, Diane worked with colleagues to produce ASM’s first online exhibit, A Nampeyo Showcase, which went live in the year 2000, the same year that ASM launched its first website. She updated the content and photos in 2024 and it continues to be one of ASM’s most popular online offerings.
Publications for the Public
Diane’s publications also strongly reflect her desire to reach a broad audience with information about the artistic and technological traditions of our region’s Native peoples. This is especially evident in her commitment to publishing as the sole author, lead co-author, or junior author of nine articles in American Indian Art Magazine, a peer-reviewed journal created with the goal of being accessible to the general public. Her most recent major publication, Woven from the Center: Native Basketry in the Southwest (published in 2024 by the University of Arizona Press), follows this same theme in her work. Woven from the Center, which serves as a catalog for the Woven Through Time permanent installation, is also a comprehensive guide to ASM’s world-class basketry collections and an authoritative treatment of the basket-making traditions of the Indigenous communities of the US Southwest and northwestern Mexico. The 400-page book has garnered abundant praise from academics as well as collectors and Native artists. It was one of three finalists for the 2024 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award in the category of anthropology and archaeology.
Woven from the Center was published in 2024.
Defining a Legacy
As an archaeological repository, ASM’s collections are about 7/8 archaeological and 1/8 ethnological. Diane made it her personal mission to strengthen the ethnological collections by pursuing strategic purchases. Faced with the reality of no budget for acquisitions, she worked with colleagues to establish the Friends of the ASM Collections, which began formally in July of 2005. Since then, the group, which is specifically dedicated to strengthening, sharing, and promoting ASM’s ethnological collections, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for acquisitions, exhibits, events, and publications. In 2017, an endowment fund was created to ensure that the group’s mission would continue to be met. The work of the Friends will indeed continue, due to the solid foundation Diane’s vision has laid.
Diane with Yaqui musicians examining Yaqui harps in 2023.
“Of all my contributions to ASM throughout the last four decades, co-founding the Friends of the ASM Collections is the one of which I am most proud. It all started on a snowy day in Denver, when I flew in to give a talk about Apache basketry to a support group of the Native Arts Department at the Denver Art Museum (DAM). DAM had been among the first art museums in the country to create a separate department devoted to Native arts. Chief Curator of Native Arts Nancy Blomberg was able to purchase new works and bring in guest lecturers like me due to the efforts of a support group, the Douglas Society, named for the inaugural curator of Native Arts, Frederic Douglas, hired in 1929.
Although a classic Colorado blizzard kept all but a few brave souls from attending my talk, I was inspired to learn about the Douglas Society and how ASM might emulate it. Blomberg generously gave of her time and advice as I collaborated with ASM’s first director of development Miriam Nickerson and then-head of collections Dr. Suzanne Griset to create what became the Friends of the ASM Collections.
Since that time, we have over the past two decades, traveled, brought in speakers, raised acquisition and program funds through memberships and our Benefit Sale, supported ASM exhibitions, and, speaking for myself, had a blast in so doing. The Friends of the ASM Collections Endowment will continue as a source of support for the ethnology section of the Collections Division.”
Diane at Tumacacori on a Friends day trip in 2025.
What’s Next?
While Diane may have run out of “official” tomorrows to share the collections, her work in and on the collections will continue in retirement, focusing on online exhibits, research on Yavapai baskets, and continuing to consult with the Friends’ acquisition committee.
Diane’s time will also be filled with continued service on the board of the Tucson Historical Preservation Foundation, serving as a judge at art fairs, running her Airbnb, and of course, increased time and travel with family and friends.
Diane’s presence will be missed within the museum and without. Her successors will be hard pressed to match her commitment to public service and her energy for public outreach.
