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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.


Archives Photo of the Week: Baby

By: Eric Schnittke

I’ve recently returned back to the museum after having taken some time off for paternity leave (thanks to Tom Stanley for covering for me while I was gone). I’m back, but my baby is still on my mind. In honor of him, this week’s photo is of a Umatilla baby. The Umatilla people inhabited around […]

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Archives Photo of the Week: Russia

By: Eric Schnittke

I absolutely love the Olympics. Winter or summer, I tune in every night to watch the amazing feats of athleticism. I figure, what better way to honor the Olympics than having this week’s photo of the week be from Russia. This photo from Golchikha, Siberia, Russia was taken by Henry Usher Hall between 1914 and 1915. […]

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Archives Photo of the Week: Dreaming of Warm Weather

By: Eric Schnittke

Philadelphia is cold. We were just hit with a snow storm, temperatures aren’t supposed to be above freezing for another week, and the thought of waiting outside for SEPTA just fills one with dread. Let’s think some better thoughts: warm sun, beaches, swimming in the ocean. This week’s photo of the week lends itself perfectly […]

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Archives Photo of the Week: Halloween

By: Eric Schnittke

Halloween was yesterday and the Penn Museum Archives wanted to leave you with one last treat for the holiday. One of the spookiest images in our collection, this photo is of a cow’s skull mounted on a stick to act as a scarecrow in Damghan, Iran. Damghan is near the site Tepe Hissar, where the […]

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Archives Photo of the Week: Baseball

By: Eric Schnittke

With baseball’s World Series starting this week, it’s fitting to pay tribute to the Fall Classic with the Photo of the Week. Featured in this image is a baseball team from an indemnity school, most likely Tsinghua College in Peking, China. Tsinghua College (now Tsinghua University) was created as a preparatory school as part of the Boxer […]

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Archives Photo of the Week: Sphinx

By: Eric Schnittke

You may have to squint, but this week’s archives photo of the week is still important. This image is the only known photograph of the Penn Museum’s Sphinx en route to Cairo for shipping to Philadelphia. The photo was sent by Flinders Petrie to then museum director George Byron Gordon. The 15-ton statue of Ramesses II […]

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Archives Photo of the Week

By: Eric Schnittke

This week’s photo features an image from the Penn Museum’s excavations at Tikal in Guatemala. William Coe, former curator of the American Section at the museum, captured the excavation of an upside-down face sculpture in Structure 34 of the North Acropolis at Tikal. This image is featured in Archivist Alessandro Pezzati’s book Adventures in Photography: Expeditions of the […]

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