Steve Nash

Steve Nash is Director of Anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS), where he has worked for eleven years. Beyond fulfilling administrative and leadership duties as one of 21 director-level leaders in the Museum, Nash is Senior Curator of Archaeology and makes substantive contributions to scientific research, collections, outreach, and internal and external service projects.

Nash was born and raised in Chicago, where he regularly attended world-class museums including the Field Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Science and Industry, and the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. His first museum job was as a tour guide at MSI, where he worked while in high school, college, and before graduate school.

Nash majored in Anthropology at Grinnell College and earned his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees at in Anthropology at the University of Arizona. He served as a post-doctoral research specialist in archaeology at the Field Museum before being promoted to serve as Head of Collections in Anthropology, a position he held for seven years.

In 2006, Nash moved to DMNS. Moving beyond a strictly collections-based focus, his new responsibilities expanded to include a field-based research program, more exhibit-related work, and collaborative work to design and build the new Avenir Collections Center. Nash conducts field research on the Mogollon archaeology of southwestern New Mexico, is serving as co-curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls traveling exhibition which opens next year, and is serving as executive producer of a documentary film on Vasily Konovalenko, a Russian gem carver. Over the course of his career, he has obtained nearly $8 million in grants and donations, written and edited seven books and more than two dozen peer-reviewed articles. He writes the column “Curiosities” for Sapiens.org, a popular on-line anthropology magazine specializing in making anthropology accessible to the public.