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.
If these pots could talk…
By: Ardeth Abrams
Photo Caption: “If these pots could talk…” Illustration by Ardeth Anderson Abrams Penn Museum Scholars presents Joyce White, Associate Curator for Asia and Director of the Ban Chiang Project Marie-Claude Boileau, Postdoctoral Scholar in archaeological ceramics Wednesday, September 21st 12:30 pm • Classroom #2 Pottery excavated from the UNESCO World Heritage site of Ban Chiang, Thailand […]
Performance of Cato: A Tragedy by Joseph Addison
By: Amy Ellsworth
Performance of Cato: A Tragedy by Joseph Addison, a set on Flickr. In the weeks, months, and years following the events of September 11, 2001, archaeologists and physical anthropologists excavated the site of the World Trade Center in New York City. Penn Museum’s special display features 15 poignant objects recovered at the site of Ground […]
If Vampire Weekend Spent Some Time in Africa…
By: Gabrielle Niu
While there isn’t a section specifically on the music of Africa in the Penn Museum’s Imagine Africa project, the evolution of contemporary African music is a great way to hear the ways that African culture influences and is influenced by the rest of the world. The band “The Very Best” was formed in London when […]
How does Louis Vuitton Imagine Fashion?
By: Gabrielle Niu
For the Imagine Africa project, the Penn Museum wants to know how you imagine different aspects of African cultures and societies, from religion to art to medicine. One particularly interesting theme is Imagine Fashion, which, as its name suggests, explores the sartorial trends, bodily modifications and adornments of African cultures. Perhaps one of the last […]
New York Times Spotlights Stewart Culin’s work at the Brooklyn Museum
By: Josh
Philadelphia ethnographer Stewart Culin worked as director of the Penn Museum from 1892 to 1903 and was instrumental in acquiring the Historic Games Collection. After his time here, Culin became a curator at the Brooklyn Museum and helped establish their African gallery. A recent New York Times article has more on the subject and the […]
The Historic Games Collection
By: Amy Ellsworth
Also in the spirit of Penn’s Year of Games, we interviewed Penn Museum Registrar Chrisso Boulis about the historic games collection. The beautifully crafted paper prints are the predecessors to the games (that require essentially no skill) like Candyland and Chutes and Ladders that we know so well. In the video Chrisso talks a bit […]
The Year of Games
By: Naomi Miller
In recognition of the “Year of Games” here at Penn, I searched ‘games’ on the Expedition magazine webpage. It turns out, the magazine has published articles about games for decades! Children’s Games (How do you say eeny, meeny, miny, mo in Turkish? Ena, mena, donsi donsi donsi!) Astragali, the Ubiquitous Gaming Pieces (near and dear […]