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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.


Ur Digitization Project: May 2013

By: Brad Hafford

Artifact of the month Spotlight on field number U.8847 (museum number B17313) Bitumen Model Boat This is a model of a marsh or river boat that was found in Trial Trench G in the Royal Cemetery area of Ur. Woolley in his field card does not record the exact tomb of this example, though U.8846, […]

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A really big show

By: Lynn Grant

One factoid about the Museum that never fails to amaze in conversation is the estimate that what’s on exhibition is less than 5% of our total collections.  The usual response is, “where’s the rest of the stuff?”  The answer is ‘in storage’.  The Museum has a whole array of storerooms (my usual joke is that […]

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How Many Toilet Paper Tubes Will It Take to Operate Penn Museum Summer Camp 2013?

By: Jennifer Reifsteck

I’m not into social media that much (for starters, I don’t do Facebook–gasp!), but if my fellow colleagues at the Penn Museum would happen to pick an avatar, a visual representation for myself, it would probably be this: This is not because I visit the bathroom more frequently than the average person.  This is because […]

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