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Welcome to the Penn Museum blog. First launched in January 2009, the Museum blog now has over 800 posts covering a range of topics in the categories of Museum, Collection, Exhibitions, Research, and By Location. Here you’ll hear directly from our staff and Penn students about their work, research, experiences, and discoveries. To explore the Museum's other digital content, visit The Digital Penn Museum.


“We Found Better Stuff!”

By: Michael Condiff

Every day I walk though the  Archaeologists & Travelers in Ottoman Lands to get to my office and I’m reminded of a rather funny commercial for Snapple. There’s a striking resemblance between the explorer who exclaims, “We Found Better Stuff!” and Osman Hamdi Bey who is a key subject in our Archaeologists & Travelers in […]

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Fun Friday Image of the Week – The Sphinx

By: Amy Ellsworth

Sphinx of Ramesses II in front of the Main Entrance of the Penn Museum, covered with snow. The Sphinx was moved into the building in 1916, and the Lower Egyptian Gallery was built around the sphinx in 1926. Penn Museum image 140759. I just rubbed my hands together and blew into them to get them […]

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Xuanzang and the Silk Road Pt. 3

By: Stephen Lang

The iconography of Xuanzang, and its history,  is quite fascinating.   Bearing the typical shaved head of a Buddhist monk, Xuanzang is depicted in our painting with a large backpack of sutras, a canopy over his head (with a hanging incense burner) and holding a scroll in his left hand and a fly wisk in […]

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Silk Road Makes Appearance on the Shanghai Art Scene

By: Gabrielle Niu

The transmission of Buddhism from India to China via the Silk Road and the consequent role that Buddhism has played in shaping Chinese culture inextricably ties the histories of the two nations together. However, while many in China are aware of India’s historical past, they are not as in touch with the accomplishments of modern […]

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Mes Aynak

By: Gabrielle Niu

With the violence and religious extremism that has indelibly shaped the contemporary world’s perception of Afghanistan, it often goes unremembered that the region for centuries flourished as a cultural crossroads of trade and Buddhism along the Silk Road. Thirty kilometers (about nineteen miles) from the Afghan capital of Kabul, under layers of unexcavated earth, lays an […]

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Penn Museum’s NAGPRA Repatriation Program

By: Amy Ellsworth

Central to the mission of the Penn Museum, is the preservation of cultural heritage as expressed in the Pennsylvania Declaration issued at the 1970 UNESCO Convention. During a Tlingit consultation visit in January 2008, Andrew Gamble, Jr. (Kaagwaantaan clan leader), Herman Davis (L’ooknax. ádi clan leader), and Tom Young (Kaagwaantaan Box House leader) donned Tlingit clan […]

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Fun Friday Image of the Week – 2,500 Year-old Dress Looks Like New

By: Amy Ellsworth

Pullover wool dress, ca. 5th-3rd century BCE. Excavated from Tomb No. 55 of Cemetery No. 1, Zaghunluq, Charchan, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China. © Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum. This is one of the objects coming to the Penn Museum in the Secrets of the Silk Road exhibition in February 2011. I am trying to […]

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West Wing Renovations–Week 9

By: Pam Kosty

At long last, the air conditioning units for the West Wing arrived on November 18.  Just a tad tricky to bring them up over the wall, into the Upper Garden, and then– –down a specially prepared shaft.  Ah, can’t you feel the cool breeze already?

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