logo

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.

The Cosmos in Storage

By: Katy Blanchard

 I know I’m not alone when I say that I get excited on Sunday nights to sit down and watch Cosmos. The re-envisioned Carl Sagan classic airs on Fox on Sunday nights with Neil deGrasse Tyson as host. I’m not going to gush about how he’s been my favorite astrophysicist since I basically learned what […]

Read the Blog Post

Anzu and “the chicken from …”

By: Katy Blanchard

Upon hearing of the newest dinosaur – the Anzu wyliei – I grew slightly more excited than your average dinosaur fan. The paleontologists gave a shout out not only to a trustee’s grandson (Wylie) but more exciting to me, to a Mesopotamian bird often seen with the body of an eagle and the head of […]

Read the Blog Post

What are Museum Keepers?

By: Katy Blanchard

People often ask me, What does a Keeper do? Which is a fair question—you might think of Zoo Keepers with that terminology. You could equate our work, at the most basic level, as “collections management,” but I think we’d all say we do so much more than that. There are Keepers in all of our […]

Read the Blog Post

Syrian Archaeology

By: Katy Blanchard

We are all familiar with the images of the Buddhas of the Bamiyan region of Afghanistan as well as the heartbreaking image of the looting inside in the Baghdad Museum in 2003. All political statements aside, Syria has joined this list of destruction and devastation in the midst of its own civil war. Friday’s UNESCO […]

Read the Blog Post

US Soldiers Get a Behind-the-Scenes Tour

By: Katy Blanchard

As head of the Archaeological Institute of America’s program to work with departing soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan, Dr. Brian Rose has begun a two day series of workshops with Fort Dix. The first day, he lectures at their base and the second day, they come to the museum for various tours. I have had […]

Read the Blog Post

I love Dirt

By: Katy Blanchard

There are two types of dirt out there, I used to tell my field school students. Dirt Dirt, and People Dirt. People Dirt? You need to wash your hands before you eat, you know, you just got off the subway and hold on for the whole ride? But Dirt Dirt? You can safely eat your […]

Read the Blog Post

Explore the Digital Penn Museum