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The Penn Museum in ③Ⓓ!

By: Stephen Lang

In the past few years, the Penn Museum has been experimenting with different kinds of scanning in order to create 3D models of some objects in our collection. Today we are announcing that many of these 3D models are now view-able via the website Sketchfab. The Sketchfab community includes many other museums, most notably the British […]

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Training Day: Evacuating a Simulated Gallery in an Emergency Drill

By: Tom Stanley

In addition to being a staff member at the Museum, I’m also enrolled as a student at Penn, in the Master of Liberal Arts program. It’s a very flexible program in terms of its schedule, which is great for people like me who work full-time jobs; it also offers considerable flexibility in terms of its content […]

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Preparing Artifacts for the Middle East Galleries

By: Alyssa Rina and Tessa Young

Much is underway at the Penn Museum as staff prepares for the opening of our new Middle East Galleries. The exhibition will open to the public on Saturday, April 21, 2018, showcasing Near Eastern artifacts that explore early writing and record keeping in burial practices, transportation, agriculture, cooking, and the arts. In preparation for the […]

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Discovery in Action: A Penn Student’s Experience

By: Tom Stanley

Discovery is a recurring theme here at the Penn Museum. From scholarly researchers to casual visitors, few who come through our doors are able to escape without discovering something about the vast history of humanity. And every now and then, the Museum even serves as a vehicle for personal discovery—for finding out something about one’s own […]

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Browsing the Collection Geographically

By: Michael Condiff

Now Available: Browse the Penn Museum object collection geographically, via an interactive map. Choose from over 1,100 locations around the world, which provide access to more than 92% of the Penn Museum’s collections online. Since we launched the online collections in 2011, there was always the intention of providing a way to browse the collection […]

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Fly, Eagles, Fly!

sphinx with eagles head

By: Margaret Spencer

So, I hear there is some kind of sportsball spectacular coming up soon, and that Philadelphia is going to be part of it. Something about a super bowl? Well, we here at the Penn Museum have a LOT of super bowls! Take a look at these: And if you want eagles, hey, we’ve got eagles!!!!! […]

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Tracing the Threads of Early New France – Kelsey Salvesen

By: Anne Tiballi

As a PhD candidate in History, specializing in early North America and the French Atlantic (largely in the 17th and 18th centuries, with some spillover into the 19th century), my research has taken me to archives in a variety of cities in several different countries. Until this summer, I had chiefly worked with documentary archives—handling […]

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What’s the Deal with Roman Walls, Anyway? Autopsy and Analysis of Rome’s Topography – Jordan Rogers

By: Anne Tiballi

I was warned about the alluring charms of Rome before I left. “You’ll fall in love.” “Coming back will be difficult.” “It’s hot in the summer.” The latter statement admittedly more enticing than I had expected. I jokingly replied that I might just remain for the year—where else should I be doing my research, after […]

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Beyond the Frame: Acee Blue Eagle in the Penn Museum

By: Margaret Bruchac

Object Analysis by Malkia Okech “Medicine Man on Horse” is a painting on paper. A Pawnee artwork with colors of blue and yellow standing out, supported by accents of red and green. A man sits astride a horse, wearing leather hide leggings, a buffalo-head headpiece with horns, moccasins, and gloves, and his face is painted. […]

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A Vision of Color: Contextualizing a Peyote Rattle in Time and Space

By: Margaret Bruchac

Object Analysis by Margaret Bruchac and Sheridan Small During the era of American westward expansion, many Native American peoples were forced from their ancestral lands and confined to reservations. The Winnebago people, for example, went through several territorial dislocations as a result of three major cession treaties with the fledgling United States. They were removed […]

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