Anita Price (Managing Director)
Anita joins the Association of Nova Scotia Museums as Managing Director with over 20 years experience in the museum world. She has worked for museums and heritage sites operated by municipal, provincial and federal levels of government as well as a non-profit society and has participated as a member in a number of heritage related non-profit umbrella organizations.
After attending J.L. Ilsley High School and Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Anita returned to her native Wales where she discovered MUSEUMS. Following a two year youth training program at Abergavenny Museum, South Wales, Anita returned to Nova Scotia and began her Nova Scotian museums career as an Interpreter at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic for two consecutive summers. In 1989, she joined the staff of the Dartmouth Heritage Museum as Assistant Curator and following that institution’s handover from municipal government to community operation in 1999, assumed the role of Curator/Manager. A change in career directions for Anita saw her join the Atlantic Service Centre of Parks Canada in 2006 for a two year term as Assistant Registrar for the collections of the 30 Atlantic Canada heritage sites operated by Parks.
A strong believer in contributing to your community, Anita has served on a variety of committees and boards over the years, including the Council of Nova Scotia Archives, the Public Archives of Nova Scotia Board of Trustees and the Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia. In 2002, she lead the Dartmouth Heritage Museum to anchor the Passage Project, a co-op based approach for community museums to leverage joint funding to improve their information technology capacity with a particular emphasis on collections management. A Canadian Museums Association award for excellence in museum management in 2006 underlined the success of the project and its importance to the community museums of Nova Scotia.
In spring of 2008, Anita moved to Prince Edward Island to pursue her long standing desire to experiment as a small business owner and established Forage Greenery & Heritage Services. The business was well on its way to a successful future as illustrated by the award of excellence from the CBDC Small Business Development Program and the Best Booth Award from the PEI Garden Show in the spring of 2009.
However, the lure of Nova Scotian museums was strong and Anita returns to her career roots with enthusiasm and dedication.
Karin Kierstead (Collections Coordinator)
Karin's Maritime roots run deep, with Planter and United Empire Loyalist ancestors in both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Born and raised in New Brunswick, Karin spent much of her childhood traveling around Nova Scotia visiting grandparents and other relatives, providing her with a familiarity of back roads and shortcuts that comes in handy when she's conducting museum site visits.
After high school, Karin spent her summers working at community museums in New Brunswick, first as a Docent at the John Fisher Memorial Museum in Kingston, and then as Interim Director of the Kings County Museum in Hampton. These experiences have given her a strong appreciation for and understanding of community museums and the many volunteers that stand behind them.
In 2000, Karin moved to Ontario to study archaeology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, participating in a field school at an Iron Age fortified city site outside Madaba, Jordan. Upon her return to Canada, she moved to Peterborough, Ontario to study Collections Conservation and Management at Sir Sandford Fleming College. These studies included an internship at Memorial University's Archaeological Conservation lab in St. John's, Newfoundland, where she worked with a wide variety of sites and artefacts – everything from Thule wooden dolls to a WWII Ventura airplane.
Karin joined the Federation of Nova Scotian Heritage in 2006 as the Collections Enrichment Project Coordinator, and in 2007 took over management of the Passage Project as Collections Coordinator. A member of the Organizational Renewal Advisory Committee, she has seen firsthand the evolution of FNSH into the Association of Nova Scotia Museums. Building on the successes of Passage and FNSH, Karin is excited to be on the front lines as ANSM continues to grow and serve the museum community of Nova Scotia, celebrating our province's rich heritage.
