A few months ago, I received my favorite kind of phone call. It was from a nice man named Warren Kamensky. He simply and matter-of-factly said, “I was a volunteer at the Museum for many years, and I want to make a gift to the Museum.” In the world of Development, this kind of thing [...]
Working in a museum can sometimes seem like an exercise in eternal patience. You seem to always be planting the seed of something that will only come to fruition weeks, months, or even years from now. One such project has been my dream of having the Chinese paintings in our collection (some of which have [...]
This cassette tape is from the era of Museum 1.0 audio tour technology. I dug this out of my treasure trove of floppy discs and zip drives in the IT office. I have yet to play the tape because I don’t have a tape player. The mobile age of museum media is forcing us to [...]
Sneakers (92-20-1A,B), Made by Mrs. Ollie Hawk, Brule Lakota (Sioux), Rosebud Reservation, South Dakota The Lakota people have been known for their fine beadwork since the late 19th century. In addition to items such as pipe bags and moccasins which were the traditional surfaces for beading, beadwork began to be used to decorate other objects [...]
I forgot to mention another act of theft I committed in cahoots with my friend Flickr, in addition to the thievery I committed in my last post. I came across the very entertaining flickr set created by the venerable Smithsonian called Smithsonian Through Your Lens where visitors posted photos of their own experience. Again, I [...]
Most museum professionals make a point to scan the industry landscape for daily feeds on what their colleagues and counterparts are up to. We call this “sourcing inspiration” in order to inform our own projects and generate ideas for new directions in actualizing our mission. This action often amounts to plain and simple stealing, thinly [...]
WHYY has a great video about the Penn Museum on their Friday Arts page today. The video features Dr. Richard Hodges, the Museum’s Williams Director, Dr. Richard Zettler, co-curator of Iraq’s Ancient Past, Dr. David Silverman, co-curator of Amarna: Ancient Egypt’s Place in the Sun, and Alex Pezzatti, Penn Museum Archivist. At minute 22:35 you [...]
Every day that something cool comes out of our archives image database is a good day. There are just so many amazing photos from years gone by relating to all sorts of stuff! Most recently we came across this gem. The Development Office’s awesome intern, Jessica, has been putting together some marketing and outreach letter [...]
A lot of the materials in computers and monitors are very harmful to the environment if not disposed of properly. Over time computer equipment becomes antiquated and or broken and it is the job of the I.T. department to follow Penn policy and recycle this e-waste. As Penn Museum has transitioned from the large CRT [...]
