Patricia Rieff Anawalt was an American anthropologist, author, and museum director. Anawalt was born on March 10, 1924, in

Ripon, California Ripon () is a city located in San Joaquin County, California. The population was 16,013 at the 2020 census. Ripon was originally known as Stanislaus City, but was renamed for Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1876. History Ripon, on the site previously know ...

. She attended the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

(UCLA). After she received her PhD she started studying pre-Columbian culture, specifically dress. Anawalt went on to serve as the curator of

costume Costume is the distinctive style of dress and/or makeup of an individual or group that reflects class, gender, occupation, ethnicity, nationality, activity or epoch—in short, culture. The term also was traditionally used to describe typica ...

s and

textile Textile is an Hyponymy and hypernymy, umbrella term that includes various Fiber, fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, Staple (textiles)#Filament fiber, filaments, Thread (yarn), threads, and different types of #Fabric, fabric. ...

s at the UCLA Museum of Cultural History. She founded the ''Center for the Study of Regional Dress'' at the

Fowler Museum at UCLA The Fowler Museum at UCLA (commonly known as The Fowler, and formerly Museum of Cultural History and Fowler Museum of Cultural History) is a museum on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) which explores art and material ...

. In 1988 she received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

. Anawalt wrote several books including ''The Essential Codex Mendoza'' (co-authored with

Frances Berdan Frances F. Berdan (born May 31, 1944) is an American archaeologist specializing in the Aztecs and professor emerita of anthropology at California State University, San Bernardino. Berdan has authored many influential books about the Aztec civilizat ...

, University of California Press, 1997) and ''The Worldwide History of Dress'' (Thames & Hudson, 2007). Anawalt died on October 2, 2015, in Los Angeles, California.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Anawalt, Patricia Rieff 1924 births 2015 deaths American women non-fiction writers American anthropologists Directors of museums in the United States American women museum directors University of California, Los Angeles alumni People from San Joaquin County, California