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.
By: Alessandro Pezzati
In 1901, Stewart Culin, Curator of the General Ethnology Section (among his many titles) of the Penn Museum, traveled to Cuba to investigate the existence of an un-acculturated indigenous group in the mountains of eastern Cuba. Culin’s journey, which lasted a few weeks, took him to Havana and points in eastern Cuba, including El Caney, […]
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By: Alessandro Pezzati
In 1907, George Byron Gordon (still as Curator of the General Ethnology Section; he would assume the Directorship of the Penn Museum in 1910) led a small ethnological reconnaissance to Alaska. He had been there in 1905, traveling along portions of the Yukon River. This time, accompanied by his brother, MacLaren Gordon, he traveled to […]
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By: Alessandro Pezzati
The Penn Museum Archives has prepared a new public exhibition, of special interest to enthusiasts of graphic art and design. “To Whom It May Concern: Letterhead from the Penn Museum Archives” presents an array of letterhead from its collections, dating mostly from the 1890s through the 1940s, when letterhead design was particularly expressive and ornate, […]
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By: Alessandro Pezzati
In conjunction with the 2015 Copa America, and especially the 2015 Women’s World Cup, the Penn Museum offers this photograph to the soccer world. Last year, I found this photo of soccer amongst the Eskimo of Point Barrow, Alaska, taken by ornithologist and Tabasco sauce heir, Edward Avery McIlhenny in 1897-1898. That photograph shows a […]
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By: Alessandro Pezzati
The 2014 FIFA World Cup has begun in Brazil this afternoon. Since it is being played in a tropical country this year, the Penn Museum Archives thought it fitting to show what is most likely the earliest photograph of a soccer game played north of the Arctic Circle. Taken at Point Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost […]
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By: Alessandro Pezzati
In its 125-year history, the Penn Museum has sent out anthropological and archaeological expeditions throughout the world. Between 1895 and 1903, three young men affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania undertook several expeditions to the Far East. Their principal destination was the island of Borneo, to traverse the interior of the island and collect ethnological […]
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By: Alessandro Pezzati
One Scholar’s Famous Student: James Pritchard and Martin Luther King, Jr. James B. Pritchard (1909-1997) was a renowned Biblical archaeologist. He worked at the Penn Museum from 1950 to 1978, excavating a number of sites in the Syro-Palestinian region, including Gibeon (1956–1962), where the sun stood still for Joshua. He also worked at Tell es-Sa’idiyeh, […]
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By: Alessandro Pezzati
Missing sibling film re-united with Matto Grosso: The Great Brazilian Wilderness (1931) Three weeks ago you were introduced to Tari, the cute Bororo boy who appears in one of the Penn Museum’s films. He also had a starring role in his own short film, which was only recently rediscovered. You will be able to see […]
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By: Alessandro Pezzati
I previously wrote about the Penn Museum’s close calls with visitors outraged because forbidden to paw at the granite sphinx. But when is it okay for a visitor to handle the artifacts? Exceptions are made, not only when you are famous, but sometimes because you are blind, and more rarely, when you are famous and […]
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By: Alessandro Pezzati
It is an eternal conundrum of museums to balance the contradictory values of preservation and access. On the one hand, museums must protect these countless pieces of the world forever, but on the other, they’re not allowed to do it the best way, which is to put everything underground in a salt mine beneath a […]
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