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When the University of California Museum of Anthropology was founded in 1901, it inherited anthropological collections that the university had been accumulating since its establishment in 1868. The core of its early holdings, however, came from several large-scale expeditions begun by Phoebe Hearst even before the museum's founding: Max Uhle in Peru, George Reisner in Egypt, Alfred Emerson in Greece and Italy, and Alfred Kroeber in California. These systematic collections were gathered according to some sort of coherent plan, such as items from every tribe or all the contents from a tomb, and richly documented by field notes, photographs, maps, or sound recordings.
Important collections also came from other regions: Guatemala (Gustavus Eisen), Alaska (Alaska Commercial Company), the Philippines, and the prehistoric Southwest. The North American collections were gathered primarily by university students; while the others came from independent agents. In most of these regions-Egypt, Peru, Native California—this was the period of the museum's greatest collections growth; a foundation for the future. Phoebe Hearst supplemented these objects with treasures from her personal collections—great works of art acquired from dealers and from her world-wide travels.
The first two decades of the museum's history came at a time of tremendous growth nationally in American anthropology, especially in universities. Berkeley's museum was first directed by Harvard anthropologist Frederic W. Putnam, but Alfred Kroeber played the most active role, officially as director from 1909 until 1946. In 1903 the burgeoning collections were transferred to an unused university building in San Francisco; exhibits opened to the public in 1911. Although the university took over the support of the museum from Mrs. Hearst in 1908, she continued to donate funds and collections until her death in 1919.
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