During fall 2022, the Penn Museum family was deeply saddened by the passing of Board of Advisors emeritus member A. Bruce Mainwaring, and former Advisors Criswell Cohagan Gonzalez and Adolf and Geraldine Paier. All were ardent and longtime Penn Museum champions, whose individual and collective impact will be felt for decades to come.
We also mourned the loss of eminent Egyptologist David O’Connor, former faculty-curator at Penn and the Museum who was instrumental in founding Penn’s Egyptology program and worked extensively at archaeological sites across Egypt, including at the site of Abydos where his excavations resulted in a new understanding of royal burials of the Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods. The fall 2023 issue of Expedition (Vol. 652), a special issue on Abydos, will be dedicated to David O’Connor and include articles on work that builds on his legacy by several of the archaeologists he trained and mentored as students. Additionally, a celebration of his life will be held at the Penn Museum in June 2023.
We send our heartfelt condolences to the families of Bruce, Cris, Dolf, Gerri, and David and offer a brief tribute to our former Penn Museum Advisors here.
A. Bruce Mainwaring, C47, PAR72, PAR75, and PAR76
A delightful presence at events and meetings with his gracious manner, humble nature, and delightful sense of humor, Bruce Mainwaring served for an extraordinary 40 years on the Museum’s Board of Advisors, including five as chair. He also served as chair of the planned giving component of the Museum’s 21st Century Campaign, and Chair of the Expansion Committee responsible for creating the Museum’s East Wing—a state-of-the-art collections storage facility opened in 2002, which he and his wife Margaret A. (Peggy) Mainwaring generously made possible by their lead support and his fundraising, and which bears their name. Bruce and Peggy were also the lead donors to the Museum’s 2010 West Wing Renovation Project—literally supporting the Museum from end to end—which included the installation of air conditioning throughout the wing, the renovation of the historic Widener Lecture Room, and the creation of a suite of conservation and teaching labs which now house the Museum’s Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM). Bruce and Peggy also endowed the first CAAM teaching specialist: the Mainwaring Teaching Specialist for Archaeozoology, held by Kate Moore, and a number of other positions and programs across the Museum.
After serving in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II, Bruce joined and later became president of his father’s Uniform Tubes Corporation before going on to create two new firms, UTI Corporation and Micro-Coax, Inc., which, like their parent company, manufacture metal tubing and related wares. UTI’s products have been used in a variety of industries including medicine, telecommunications, and aerospace, as evidenced when UTI tubing traveled to the moon on an Apollo spacecraft.
An opera lover and avid fly fisherman, Bruce was engaged in an extensive number of philanthropic and civic activities outside of Penn as well. His service reached from the presidency of his local Rotary Club to membership on the Board of Governors of the American Research Center in Egypt, to service on almost every committee at Beaumont at Bryn Mawr, where he resided with Peggy in later years.
Bruce was not only a colleague, but a dear friend to so many at Penn who will long recall the kindness of spirit and heartfelt attention he brought to each and every conversation.
Criswell (Cris) Cohagan Gonzalez
The Penn Museum was fortunate that when Criswell (Cris) Cohagan Gonzalez moved from her native Texas to Philadelphia, her passion for the pursuit of knowledge led her to build on her previous studies at the University of Texas at Austin, the Judson School in Arizona, and the Sorbonne in Paris to take courses at the University of Pennsylvania.
Her graduate courses at Penn led her to the Museum, where she became an early champion of the field research taking place in Ban Chiang, Thailand, and Laos where she traveled with Dr. Joyce White in 1994, as well as Egypt, where she traveled with Dr. David Silverman. A friend and supporter also of the Museum’s K–12 education programs, Cris served for over 20 years on our Board of Advisors and was an honorary member of the Women’s Committee from 2004 to 2015.
Cris was an avid gardener, creating and caring for an exquisite garden at her longtime home in Ambler, and a devoted collector of antiques—an interest she shared with her mother and many lifelong friends. She loved to travel, especially to Mexico, China, Hong Kong, Argentina, Paris, and Amsterdam, and learn about other cultures—a passion that fed her decades-long devotion to the Penn Museum.
Adolf A. Paier, Jr., W60, And Geraldine Shnakis Paier, PH.D., HUP66, Nu68, GNU85, GR94
Adolf (Dolf) and Geraldine (Gerri) Paier both strongly believed in giving back to their community and supporting good causes and the Penn Museum was blessed to benefit from their volunteer service on many fronts, as well as their financial support. Both graduates of Penn—Dolf graduated from Wharton School and Gerri completed her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees all from the School of Nursing—they supported their reunion and scholarship funds, the Penn Fund, and Penn Nursing, but their passion was in the Museum’s Native American collections, which resonated with their love of Native American art, crafts, and culture.
In a 2014 profile Gerri characterized the Museum as: “one of a few… in the U.S. that actively support these cultural groups with programs that encourage contemporary artists, storytellers, and others to help keep these cultures alive.” Her first Penn Museum volunteer role was assisting Associate Curator and Senior Keeper Lucy Fowler Williams and Keeper Bill Wierzbowski of the American Section with the rehousing of objects to the Mainwaring Wing when it opened in 2002. Gerri and Dolf would go on to become lead supporters of the long-term exhibition Native American Voices, opened in 2014, and the Mexico and Central America Gallery, opened in 2019, where the Living Maya section showcasing rotating displays of richly woven and embroidered clothing ensembles spoke to Gerri’s own passion for textiles.
In a long and distinguished career in the business world, Dolf’s roles included President and CEO of Safeguard Scientifics after working his way up through the company in various roles. Gerri’s lifelong passion for nursing included a specialty in geriatric care and a clinical faculty appointment in the Nurse Practitioner program at the University of Arizona at Tucson.
Dolf and Gerri each served on the Museum’s Board of Advisors, Dolf from 1998 to 2007, and Gerri from 2007 to 2019. Dolf was also a founding member of the Director’s Council, from 2010, whose contributions to the group’s discussions around strategic issues facing the Museum were characterized by both incisive observation and wry humor.