May

On the move at the Zoo, in the Gardens and around our Biodiverse world

May 8, 2014 Coming? Going? Let your colleagues know! Submit items to torch@si.edu and put “On the Move” in the subject line. Be sure to include contact information and a picture as an attachment. We love pictures!

Smithsonian Gardens

Matt Burch is the newest horticulturist at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. He will also help out in the Ripley Garden this spring, and making a rotation the other Washington, D.C., mall locations.

Prior to joining the Smithsonian, Burch was with the National Park Service, where he was a gardener at the White House, working primarily in the vegetable garden there. He also Matt also owns an organic farm and and participates in Community Supported Agriculture in the Winchester, Va., are. A veteran of the Marine Corps, Burch has a degree in horticulture, with a minor in floriculture from West Virginia University.

Matt Burch

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Kerry Brougher, acting director and chief curator of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, will leave this summer to become director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences new Academy Museum. Brougher began his career at the Hirshhorn in 2000. The move to Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum would be a return to Los Angeles for Brougher, who held curatorial positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles from 1982 to 1997. Groundbreaking for the new museum is expected to take place later this year at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art campus.

Kerry Brougher (Photo by Bill O’Leary / Washington Post)

National Zoo

Pierre Comizzoli, research biologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and leader of the Pan-Smithsonian Cryo-Initiative, has agreed to serve as Acting Director of the Consortium for Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet, effective May 5. While serving as Director he will continue to remain active in his other duties at SCBI and within the Cryo-Initiative.

Comizzoli holds a doctorate in veterinary medicine from the Veterinary School of Alfort and a doctorate from the University of Tours. After working for five years as a research scientist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, he joined SCBI’s Center for Species Survival in 2002 to develop new projects on gamete and tissue cryopreservation for rare and endangered species. He is also in charge of conservation projects on wild carnivores and ungulates in Northern Africa and in Southeast Asia.

Over the past three years, Comizzoli has served on a number of proposal review panels for the Consortia and is currently a member of the executive committee of the biogenomics initiative.

Pierre Comizzoli

Smithsonian Libraries

Polly Khater

Polly Khater is the Libraries’ new Assistant Director for Discovery Services. She will provide oversight and support for resource acquisitions and work with her staff to provide access to the Libraries’ rich and unique collections and resources. She will also continue leading the efforts to implement and develop the Libraries’ discovery service, OneSearch.

Prior to joining the Smithsonian in 2008, Khater was the Director of Technical Services at George Mason University. Previously, she was the head of cataloging and bindery in the Himmelfarb Library at George Washington University Medical Center, Distance Learning Librarian for Booz Allen Hamilton in Tysons Corner, Va., and adjunct faculty at the School of Library and Information Science at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.