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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.


Adventure Calls: The Life of a Woman Adventurer

By: Kyra Kaercher

Ur Project February 2016 “Perhaps the presence of a lone woman with four men in camp makes a more interesting figure for some of them than the outline of ziggurats” (G. Gordon letter to L. Woolley concerning Katharine Menke Keeling, July 8th 1926). Life on a dig is always exciting, and particularly when it is the […]

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What’s in a Name?

By: Kate Pourshariati

Chanthadeth Chanthalangsy has a complicated life history to go with his multi-syllabic name. Having a Lao father and a Cambodian mother, his name reflects a choice of necessity made by his parents before immigrating, as you will see in his short film below. Some footage from the Museum Archives’ Watson Kintner Collection of Cambodia and […]

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Elder Folks as “Living Museums”

By: Kate Pourshariati

We in the Museum Archives were pleased to host the extended George Rawls family, where they were able to catch up on their grandfather/great-grandfather and his role in the feature film Matto Grosso, the Great Brazilian Wilderness (1931). Our visitor John Ash is the grandson of George Rawls, the Florida cowboy who played the lead […]

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Heart Health Month at the Museum

By: Tom Stanley

There’s plenty to celebrate in February. February is Black History Month; it’s part of the internationally recognized Season for Nonviolence; it’s also the shortest month of the year, which is nice when you earn a monthly salary (same pay for fewer days of work), but not as nice when you’re paid hourly (same monthly bills, but fewer days to earn money […]

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Ur Project, January 2016: A Tour of Ur

By: Brad Hafford

Ur, Then and Now Comparing photos from the field and from a recent visit Field photos no. 454 and 1884 with equivalents taken in 2015 I’ve been studying the ancient city of Ur for more than a decade, but due to the struggles the nation of Iraq has endured I’d never been able to visit […]

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