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.
Identifying the Celestial Beings
By: Stephen Lang
In my previous post I explained how we identified the Buddha in our Tejaprabha mural. But what about the other figures? If we take a close look at the mural we notice that many of the figures have different attributes. For instance, they may be holding something in their hand or have a mark in […]
Identifying the Tejaprabha Mural
By: Stephen Lang
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the mural depicting Tejaprabha Buddha originally came into the museum and was published with the central figure identified as Sakyamuni Buddha. However a few years later someone noticed that one of the figures on the left was holding a small book with an inscription on it. It was […]
I Spy with My Little Eye…
By: Cassia Balogh
One of the most amazing aspects of Buddhist murals condition survey is that it does not get boring. We are constantly discovering more details and quirks. While a regular, sharp-eyed museum visitor can see many of these details, some are impossible to truly appreciate without being fifteen feet tall and two feet from the mural. […]