New leader tapped for humanities council

There's been a swap at the top at the Nevada Humanities Council.

After 24 years, executive director Judith Winzeler is retiring and will be replaced Jan. 15 by Christina Barr, program outreach coordinator at the Western Folklife Center in Elko.

"For Judy, it's been a labor of love," said Marilyn Melton, former chairwoman of the council's board of trustees, in a prepared statement. "She made it her life. She's always been there at the programs and any challenge, she's always met it." Melton added that Winzeler was able to "give the public what it wants while staying within government guidelines."

The organization is one of 56 state and territorial councils affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities, creating and supporting humanities programs throughout Nevada.

Among Winzeler's accomplishments were the Vegas Valley Book Festival, the History Day in Nevada student competition, a speakers bureau that provided talks on history and culture and the Online Nevada Encyclopedia. During her tenure, hundreds of federal grants were provided to local organizations to produce their own programs. In her honor, the board is reinstating an annual award and naming it the Winzeler Humanities Award, honoring significant contributors to the support of the humanities in Nevada.

Barr, who once served as the Folklife Program associate for the Nevada Arts Council in Las Vegas, earned a master's degree in folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. At the Western Folklife Center, she worked on research projects around the West on topics including Latino culture in Nevada and the Pacific Northwest, and assisted on arts programs and grant review panels.

In a prepared statement, Barr said that "for the last seven years, I have worked to enrich the cultural life of the state, to help Nevadans understand the value and context of their cultural heritage and to bring these experiences to the public on the local, regional and national level. "