September 18, 2011 - January, 2013

How do you imagine Africa?

Do you see it as the home of powerful nations? Do you think of intricately carved masks or fine art? Maybe you’re interested in the peoples living in Africa today.

Imagine Africa with the Penn Museum is a twelve-month project investigating your thoughts. Visitors will see a small selection from the Penn Museum’s extraordinary African collection, and will be asked for their feedback on what they see. Community groups will be invited to give us more detailed feedback. In this way, we will form a picture of what most visitors want to know about the vast continent of Africa. With this feedback, the museum will plan a re-installation of the African collection, informed by academic and community perspectives.

Find out about the Imagine Africa Family Membership!

Join the discussion! Visit the Imagine Africa website

Download the brochure

 

Imagine Africa with the Penn Museum is made possible with funding from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage through the Heritage Philadelphia Program, and the PoGo Family Foundation.

October 15, 2011 – February 12, 2012

Offering a glimpse into the complex and vivid world of the Byzantine Empire, this new exhibition presents large-scale contemporary photographs by well-known Turkish photographer Ahmet Ertug. The photographs highlight culturally significant UNESCO heritage sites in present-day Turkey with a focus on the Karanlik, Tokali and Merymana churches located in the dramatic Cappadocian region of central Anatolia. This exhibition was organized by the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan.

Photo (right): Karanlik Kilise (Dark Church), Mid 11th century, Göreme, Turkey. The tympanum (the semicircular surface above the entry) is decorated with an image of the Crucifixion. Above left, on the vaulted ceiling, is an image of the Betrayal of Judas. Above right is the archangel Phlogotheel. Photograph by Ahmet Ertug, 2005-2006.

Read the press release

1^st floor, Merle-Smith Galleries

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The presentation of Vaults of Heaven at the Penn Museum is made possible with generous support from Sarah Zimmerman, the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Ancient Studies, and the Turkish Cultural Foundation.

Special Display
September 18, 2011 through 2012

Each year, the Penn Provost’s office sponsors a series of events around a theme chosen by faculty, staff and students. The 2011-2012 academic year is the Year of Games. In conjunction with the Penn reading Project, departments across the university will launch an exploration of games in all their manifestations. Programming includes interdisciplinary conferences, symposia, exhibits, performances and more, all produced on Penn’s campus by our schools, departments, resource centers, and partners.

To coincide with the Penn’s 2011-2012 academic theme, Penn Museum presents a “Year of Games” display. Highlighting objects from the Museum’s collection, the installation features games of skill and games of chance. The two small cases display some examples of game pieces from the early 19th century, sporting equipment, and cards. Visitors to the museum can also try their hand at ancient games, with recreated board games available to borrow in the Pepper Mill Cafe.

Presented in the Trescher Entrance Atrium

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Special photography display now showing in the Archives hallway

A collection of albumen prints from the early 1890s illustrating the manners and customs of the Kyrgyz people, and localities in the vicinity of Tashkent and Samarkand in Uzbekistan.  Photographed by Bolojinsky, the images were purchased in 1896 by a Penn Museum representative attending the coronation of Czar Nicholas II and the Czarina Alexandra.  These rare images offer a glimpse into a world now remote.

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In Righteous Dopefiend: Homelessness, Addiction and Poverty in Urban America, anthropologist Philippe Bourgois and photographer-ethnographer Jeff Schonberg document the daily lives of homeless drug users, drawing upon more than a decade of fieldwork they conducted among a community of heroin injectors and crack smokers who survive on the streets of San Francisco’s former industrial neighborhoods. About 40 black and white photographs are interwoven with edited transcriptions of tape recorded conversations, fieldwork notes, and critical analysis to explore the intimate experience of homelessness and addiction. Revealing the social survival mechanisms and perspectives of this marginalized “community of addicted bodies,” the exhibition also sheds light on the often unintended consequences of public policies that can exacerbate the suffering faced by street-based drug users in America. Righteous Dopefiend is presented in conjunction with the Slought Foundation which offered a multimedia installation with related programming that ran December 3 through 31, 2009.

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Third Floor Video Theatre

What in the World is an interactive installation created by multi-disciplinary artist Pablo Helguera as part of the Philagrafika contemporary art festival. The interactive exhibition is based on the popular 1950s TV show What in the World? created by former Penn Museum director, Dr. Froelich Rainey. Mr. Helguera offers a new perspective on the Museum's collection, "not through the traditional reading of an artifact as representative of the ideas and customs of an ancient culture, but instead as representative of the ideas and customs of those who collected it in the first place, bringing to the fore the singularities of historical curatorial visions."

As one of five "Out of Print" cultural partners participating in the Philagrafika 2010 international contemporary art festival, the Penn Museum hosted New York-based artist Pablo Helguera. After exploring the Museum and its collections, he developed a project that taps into the vast archival resources of the institution. The provocative new installation features a recreated set from the famous television program, Museum artifacts, and a series of videos designed to provide "an unauthorized biography" of the 123-year-old Penn Museum.

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