About the Registrar

The Registrar's Office of the Penn Museum, established in 1929, facilitates the development and implementation of policies and procedures relating to the acquisition, management, and disposition of collections, as well as all general, student, and scholarly research specifically related to the collections of the Penn Museum.

This is the center for coordinating collections-related activities. These activities include but are not limited to:

• donations processing
• loans processing
• object identification service
• special projects (e.g. Collections Move project & Civic Center Collection project)
• research of our collections

Our office is the central repository for object-oriented documentation and records for our collections. We provide collection related services and information to Museum staff members, and the general public.  We are open for research by appointment only Tuesday through Friday, 10am - 4:30pm. No object information will be given by phone or email.

We maintain basic card file documentation for the estimated one million objects in the Museum. The cards are organized numerically by the object's accession number. The accession number can be found on the object's exhibit label; no information can be provided by the Museum Registrar's Office without this number.

Catalogue cards provide basic information about where an object comes from, its cultural affiliation and date, what it is made of, its measurements, and how it was acquired. Descriptions of the objects vary from a single phrase to a few paragraphs. The catalogue card provides information available at the time of acquisition. The most current information is generally found on the object's exhibition label.

We do not maintain publication lists on objects, though sometimes a reference is noted on the catalogue card. Many of the pieces on exhibit at this Museum have not been published.

See the Museum Archives for information on researching the archives collections.

Contact
Chrisso Boulis Registrar, Records
(215) 898-4088
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