Category Archives: Building Transformation

An Answer to the tough question: What is your favorite thing?

Posted on by
Reply

By Tessa de Alarcon

A question we often get asked in the Artifact Lab is, “what is your favorite thing that you have worked on?” Usually I find this question hard to answer because we work on so many different and fascinating objects, but at the moment, it’s a no-brainer. The trumpets from the Democratic Republic of Congo that are slated to go into the new Africa Galleries are by far some of the coolest objects I have ever worked on. As an example, here is AF5211:

After treatment photo of AF5211

This trumpet is carved from elephant ivory (identifiable by the clearly visible Schreger lines).

Detail of AF5211 showing Schreger lines: a feature used to identify elephant ivory

There is some type of reptile skin wrapped around one end and stitched together on the side, and animal fur that literally makes this object look like a rock star.

detail of AF5211 showing the reptile skin and fur

All these details make this object beautiful, but what makes it special is what is hiding beneath the skin. In a few spots where the reptile skin has shifted you can glimpse repairs.

Detail of AF5211 showing plant fiber repairs

The repairs are even more visible from the interior of the object. It seems that at some point, probably when this object was in use, the ivory split. It was then repaired by drilling holes into the ivory and stitching it together. There is also some type of resinous mixture that was put into the join.

Overall view of the interior of AF5211 showing repairs

Detail of the interior of AF5211 showing the repairs

The reptile skin may have been added to both hide the repair and support it so that the object could continue to be used. It is these glimpses of the life of the object that make it so special. It tells not just the story of its craftsmanship but also the people who used it and cared for it.

To see this object in person, visit the new Africa Galleries when they open in November of this year!

Horus gets a facelift

Posted on by
1

By Anna O’Neill, Alice and Herbert Sachs Egyptian Collections Conservator

When I last wrote about transforming a stela, I wrote about removing an old coating on a small stela fragment. Well, stelae come in all shapes and sizes, and I just finished treating another one!

We just opened Ancient Egypt: From Discovery to Display, which highlights some of the Penn Museum’s Egyptian artifacts while our larger galleries are being renovated. This was the perfect time for some of the pieces that have always been on display to come into the conservation lab for a little bit of TLC (tender loving conservation).

This stela is a black quartzite monument for the pharaoh Qa’a, the last king of the First Dynasty in Egypt, around 2910 BCE. It is about five feet tall and shows a falcon representing the god Horus standing atop a serekh (a boxy decoration representing a palace) containing the hieroglyphs for Qa’a’s name.

The Penn Museum Qa’a stela (E6878) before treatment with old restored areas outlined in red (left) and the Cairo example (right). A letter from Penn Egyptologist Sara Yorke Stevenson to the archaeologist William Flinders Petrie in 1901 declares that the restoration “gives an idea of life”.

As you can see in the image above, the stela was heavily restored with cement in the early 1900s to make it look whole. Unfortunately, the restoration had given Horus a somewhat comical expression. With a big beak and tiny eye, he looked perpetually disappointed and definitely not stylistically appropriate for his time. Fortunately, our statue has a mirror twin in the Cairo Museum, which it would have been paired with on site in Abydos. Because the one in Cairo is mostly intact, we can use it as an example of what ours would have looked like. The head and beak are much smaller and simpler, giving Horus the look of a bird of prey. With the curators, we decided to give Horus a facelift based on the Cairo Museum example.

First, we did some digital mock-ups of how the head would look before I painted the outline directly onto the restored area. Using a Dremel rotary tool with a grinding stone attachment, I shaped Horus’s head and beak to more appropriate proportions, which was a very dusty but very satisfying process. Since we didn’t have any good examples of what the eye might have looked like (the Cairo Museum face is damaged), I filled this area using Paraloid B-72 and glass microballoons. I also sanded down the squared-off edges of the restored border so they sloped down into the background, again like the Cairo Museum stela, and smoothed some of the rougher areas of restoration.

Horus’s reconstructed head before treatment (left), with rough digital sketch (center), and during reshaping with the Dremel (right). Please note that I only reshaped what I knew was the restoration material! Conservators never make changes to original parts of objects.

Once the curators were happy with the shape of Horus’s head, it was time to move on to painting. The previous paint that covered the cement was a color that didn’t quite match any of the tones in the stone – fine for display in a dim gallery, but the stela’s new home would be more brightly lit. Finding the right color was challenging because the top fragment, which was found a few years after the bottom pieces, is a slightly darker color than the rest of the stela. I decided on a mid-tone that worked with the base color of the surrounding original stone, and then used a sponge to layer lots of highlights and darker shades to blend in with the actual artifact. I also used paint to create the optical illusion of “finishing” the bottom left corner of the serekh so that it appears complete from a distance.

The Qa’a stela after reshaping and repainting the old restoration.

You can now see the Qa’a stela and lots of other amazing Egyptian artifacts in Ancient Egypt: From Discovery to Display. The Artifact Lab has also reopened, and we look forward to being able to talk to everyone about the work we’re doing to prepare for all the exciting changes at the Penn Museum.

The Artifact Lab: back in business

Posted on by
Reply

We have not posted on the blog in awhile, but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t been up to our eyeballs in work! In fact, the Artifact Lab has been closed to the public since the week after Thanksgiving but it re-opens tomorrow as part of a larger exhibit, Ancient Egypt: From Discovery to Display. This new exhibit will highlight some of our Museum’s excavations in Egypt around the turn of the last century (in Memphis) and in the present day (in Abydos). It also will include artifacts that were previously on display in our Lower Egyptian gallery, which we closed last July to begin conservation work on the monumental pieces previously displayed in that space. This work is in preparation for the future opening of our Ancient Egypt and Nubia galleries and is part of our larger Building Transformation project.

Photos showing the deinstallation of pieces in the Lower Egyptian gallery, summer 2018

Another feature of Ancient Egypt: From Discovery to Display is a visible storage area, adjacent to the Artifact Lab, which will show coffins, mummies, and other funerary materials on “display” on storage shelves. Some of this material was treated recently in the Artifact Lab while other pieces are awaiting treatment in the upcoming months. Display cases in this space contain some pretty stellar pieces including 2 painted wooden boat models from the First Intermediate Period and the faience broad collar that was recently re-strung.

View of the visible storage space, with the Artifact Lab in the background

Before we re-open and our focus turns completely to working on material for the new Ancient Egypt and Nubia galleries, we thought we’d reflect on what we have done in the Artifact Lab over the last 6+ years that we have been open. Here are some numbers:

6+ years (77 months) in the Artifact Lab:

  • Spoken to approximately 30,000 museum visitors during our twice daily open window sessions (that is more than 2000 hours, or 83 days of talking!)
  • The outreach has been carried out by 15 conservators, five curriculum interns, 21 pre-program interns, four high school interns, and five Penn-affiliated non-conservator colleagues
  • Published 234 blog posts on this blog
  • Provided an endless array of content for the Museum’s social media accounts
  • Treated approximately 700* artifacts and 13 human mummies from the following Sections in the Museum: Egyptian, American, Asian, Near Eastern, Mediterranean, African, Babylonian, Physical Anthropology. *Note – many of these required 100+ hours of treatment
  • Spent 12 hours on the front page of Reddit.com
  • Thanks to this blog, reunited family members whose great grandparents donated our mummy Wilfreda to the Museum
  • Hosted and created programming for approximately 400 Penn Museum summer campers
  • Spoken with the media on more than twenty separate occasions, appeared in newspapers across the country in stories like this one about CT scanning a child mummy, and recorded content for the news and for educational programs – most recently for NBC News Learn
  • Featured in the Philadelphia Science Festival in 3 separate years, including a 2013 signature event and the “Be a Conservator!” program in 2017
  • Gave formal presentations about our work in the Artifact Lab at five professional conferences and eight other professional events/venues. They were all great but the 2015 Death Salon was definitely a highlight.

AND we had fun doing all of it!

Stay tuned for updates on some of our recent work, including treatments for objects that are in Ancient Egypt: From Discovery to Display and for the upcoming Mexico & Central America Gallery!

 

The Golden Rule…of Conservation

Posted on by
Reply

By Tessa Young and Jen Mikes

Conservators love gold! Not only can it be worked with ease through a variety of processes to make beautiful artwork and jewelry, but it also never tarnishes or corrodes…not in 50 years or 5000 years – NEVER! When Queen Puabi’s headdress (ca. 2450 BCE) was excavated in the 1920s by Sir Leonard Woolley, her golden adornments were gleaming just as brightly as ever. You can learn more about Queen Puabi and her amazing treatment history here, and in the new Middle East Galleries.

Left: In situ image of the headdress of Queen Puabi, excavated by Leonard Woolley in the 1920s. Right: Puabi’s headdress on display in the new Middle East Galleries.

In the past few weeks, the Conservation Lab has been shimmering with gold. Williams Project Conservator Alexis North is preparing for the upcoming Mexico and Central America Gallery, treating gold pendants and ornaments. As a material, gold has virtually no inherent vices: it will not deform or crack with changes in relative humidity or temperature, nor will it discolor with age or UV exposure… it’s as stable a material as a conservator could ask for!  According to the American Institute for Conservation’s Wiki gold entry, “Under normal conditions, [ ] gold is incredibly stable and is more often susceptible to damage from mechanical pressures (scratching, distortion, etc.) rather than corrosion and other chemical processes.” Since conservators spend considerable amounts of time preventing and treating corrosion of less stable metals, the chance to work with largely inert gold objects is very exciting.

https://www.penn.museum/collections/object/253831

Gold frog ornament, SA2902, with a mend on its back proper right foot. https://www.penn.museum/collections/object/253831

Despite it’s notorious stability, each gold object was carefully documented and assessed for condition issues, as with everything that comes through the conservation labs. For most gold objects, the only treatment necessary is a brief campaign of degreasing with ethanol on cotton swabs. For others with thin and pliable areas, such as the back right foot of the golden frog ornament pictured above, external forces exerted on the material may cause stress cracks, potentially culminating in a break. Where cracks are seen, mends with toned Japanese tissue may be applied, creating inconspicuous band-aid-like fixes. After these quick treatments, the objects can often be returned to storage by the end of the day.

However, not all that glitters is entirely gold. Because gold is such a soft and expensive material, many “gold” objects are composed primarily of a harder and less expensive metal with just a thin layer of gold at their surface. There are several processes used to achieve this look. A number of the gold objects in the upcoming Mexico and Central America Gallery, including the golden frog ornament above, were manufactured using the technique of depletion gilding. Additional methods of gilding may be used to adorn metal or wood surfaces such as water gilding, oil gilding, acrylic gilding, or mercury gilding.

Another method for achieving the look of gold while reducing the cost or fragility, is by creating alloys (mixtures) of gold and other metals; a common example is white gold, which is composed of gold and nickel, palladium, platinum, and manganese. The inclusion of other metals in a gold alloy alters the properties of the gold, and may increase the hardness of the final material. However, the presence of non-gold metals in an alloy will predispose the material to tarnishing and discoloration.

To learn more about gold in Central America, check out this piece from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A Columnar Matter Part III: The Conservation and Installation of a 3rd Millennium BCE Mosaic Column from Al ‘Ubaid

Posted on by
Reply

By Marci Jefcoat Burton

As a last installment of the mosaic column from Tell al-Ubaid in Iraq, we are pleased to announce the treatment and remounting of the 4,200(+) year-old shell, pink limestone, and black shale tesserae is complete (Figure 1)! After a number of years in collection storage, the recently conserved column is now in the Middle East Gallery, and ready for visitors when the exhibit opens this Saturday, April 21, 2018. The treatment process was a dynamic collaborative project, involving a team of seven conservators to clean, repair and re-mount hundreds of triangular and diamond shaped tesserae over the span of 18 months.

Figure 1: The previous column support (left), with all tesserae deconstructed from each section. Only mounting materials, such as plaster ground and reconstructions, remain on the supports. (Right) The newly mounted tesserae on Ethafoam column supports.

The tesserae were originally mounted at the archaeological site in 1919 – 1924 on four hollow cylindrical sections made of wire mesh and burlap. The tesserae were imbedded in a thick layer of plaster, and the resulting weight on a somewhat flexible base eventually became a structural problem. In addition, each column section had a large area of plaster reconstruction to continue the mosaic design around the column. For a memory refresher of the previous condition and treatment protocol, visit our blog posts, column blog 1 and column blog 2.

After months of cleaning every tessera and adhering many fragments back together, the tesserae were mounted onto a new support made from solid Ethafoam, a chemically stable and dense foam (Figure 2). Each new column section support was reconstructed to the same measurements as the wire mesh and burlap supports. The previous use of plaster proved too rigid and heavy in the original mounting system, causing many cracks to develop in the plaster and tesserae to loosen over time. For these reasons, plaster was not used again, and the tesserae were mounted to the Ethafoam supports with an acrylic paste (Paraloid® B-72 (ethyl methacrylate (70%) and methyl acrylate (30%) copolymer) in acetone bulked with glass microspheres) toned black with dry pigments. This is lighter in weight compared to plaster, and compatible with the shell and stone materials. The black acrylic paste was made to resemble bitumen, a pine resin material used by the Mesopotamians to originally mount the tesserae to the c. 3rd Millennium BCE column.

Figure 2: Mounting process of column section #2. The cleaned and repaired tesserae are mounted to the Ethafoam cylindrical supports with Paraloid® B-72 (ethyl methacrylate (70%) and methyl acrylate (30%) copolymer) in acetone bulked with glass microspheres and toned black with dry pigments to mimic bitumen. Spatulas were used to spread the acrylic resin on the support and tesserae were imbedded into the mixture.

All four column sections stack and connect with an internal wooden dowel system. To accommodate the large areas that were once plaster restorations, our Photo Studio printed high resolution, archival images of the tesserae, which were custom scaled and fit to each column section (Figure 3). The digital photo fills integrate a complete mosaic design to give the appearance of a fully mosaicked column (Figure 4). This is a great example of how recent technological advancements help conservators with approaches to treatment and display options.

Figure 3: (From left), Conservation Interns Tessa Young, Alyssa Rina and Jennifer Mikes installing digital photo fills to the top and bottom mosaic column sections.

Figure 4: (a): Column section #2, after remounting tesserae. The locations with previous plaster reconstructions are padded with Volara (closed-cell polyethylene foam). (b): Column section #2 after pinning archival photo fill into place over the Volara.

The mosaic column, and over 1,500 objects await your visit in the Middle East Galleries (Figure 5)! To our visitors in the Artifact Lab who witnessed our many, many hours of treating these column sections, we thank you for your brilliant questions, comments and curiosity about the tesserae and our conservation process during our Open Window Sessions. You will find the assembled column has transformed into an impressive and complete piece, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Figure 5: Bob Thurlow (Special Projects Manager) and Marci Jefcoat Burton (Conservation Curriculum Intern) installing the four mosaic column sections in the Middle Eastern Gallery.

Ancient faces in the Middle East Galleries

Posted on by
Reply

Our new Middle East Galleries open next week and they will feature over 1200 artifacts from our collection, including many iconic objects like the Ram in the Thicket, the Bull-headed lyre, and Queen Puabi’s headdress. Oh, and for those of you who are always asking about our cuneiform tablets, do we have a treat in store for you – there are dozens and dozens in the galleries. The majority of the objects in the exhibition were excavated by Penn archaeologists, many nearly a century ago.

ALL of these objects came through our Conservation Labs to prepare them for the galleries and many needed significant treatment in order to ensure their stability for long-term display. Our Middle East Galleries (MEG) team has worked diligently and tirelessly on this project – you can read more about some aspects of this work on the Penn Museum blog here.

The triumphant column team poses next to the 4 recently conserved mosaic column drums from Tell al-‘Ubaid, Iraq. This project took months to complete.

In just over a week, visitors to the Museum will have the opportunity to get up close and personal with these newly-conserved objects. Everyone will be drawn to the highlight pieces mentioned above and here, but the other pieces are worth lingering over too. It’s usually impossible to see them as closely as we do during the conservation treatment process, so I thought I’d give you the opportunity to see 2 small but beautiful objects closer than you can in the galleries.

B8997 (left) and B9026 (right)

These 2 female figures, both excavated from Nippur, Iraq, will be on display in the same case in the Middle East Galleries. They’re small, just several inches long. The figure on the left was likely a doll which would have had articulated arms; you can see the holes where they were once attached. Fortunately, both artifacts required very little treatment. B8997, the figure on the left, does have a large, but stable crack that did not require any treatment. Examination under the binocular microscope revealed small amounts of burial dirt on both figures which had escaped previous cleaning campaigns, so both were carefully surface cleaned to remove this soil.

Detail of B9026 before (left) and after (right) cleaning, 7.5X magnification

As I worked on these figures, I captured some images with the camera attachment on our Leica microscope. Both objects are made of bone and are delicately carved. The reverse side of the doll’s head has an unworked area that nicely shows the cancellous (or spongy) bone features.

B8997 detail of front (left) and reverse (right), 7.5X magnification

Their time in the lab was brief – they only stayed for a day or 2. But in the midst of the hustle and bustle of preparing for these galleries, it’s nice to take a moment to appreciate the details.

The Middle East Galleries open to the public on Saturday, April 21. Our department has a few loose ends to wrap up with that project (and a few loose ends on the blog – stay tuned for a last blogpost on the mosaic column treatment) but we’re already turning to our next big tasks – the renovation of our Mexico & Central America Galleries, Africa Galleries, and Egyptian Galleries.

Transformation Tidbits on a Tuesday

Posted on by
Reply

By: Anna O’Neill, Jonathan Stevens, and Céline Wachsmuth

It’s Tuesday! And time for another transformation post. As the Kaipure team is wrapping up our work, we have been reflecting upon how different everything has become from when we first started the project in June 2017, almost a year ago. We have seen many transformations, both big and small. Here are some snapshots of transformations we’ve seen throughout the project:

First thing’s first, we have our simple, but satisfying, surface cleaning transformation. Jonathan shares one of his blocks in the middle of cleaning:

Photo by Jonathan Stevens Cleaning in progress. Most of the background of this limestone block has been dry-cleaned using white rubber erasers, vulcanized latex sponges and cosmetic sponges. The brighter areas are clean and any area that looks gray has not been cleaned yet.

Cleaning is fun, especially when the results are so nice and neat!

Anna had the chance to rejoin two block fragments, something that we haven’t been able to do much of because of the size and weight of most of the blocks, even though some are broken and we know how they fit together.

Photos by Anna O’Neill For this piece, both the main block and missing fragment were cleaned and the break edges consolidated with 2% w/v Paraloid B-72. Then the fragment was adhered with 40% w/v Paraloid B-72 and held in place with straps overnight until the join had set. The cracks were filled with a white Paraloid B-72/glass microballoon mixture, which provides support to areas of loss and helps to protect the fragile edges along the break. The fill was then painted with Golden acrylic paints to integrate it with the rest of the piece.

One of the last blocks Céline had the chance to work on also had one of the most fragile surfaces of any of the blocks. It was a lengthy, but incredible treatment. Both images below show the process of stabilizing the block’s surface. After cleaning, loose and lifting fragments were secured by injecting a 30% solution of Paraloid B-72 in acetone beneath the flakes. The unprotected edges of the flakes were supported and protected with a mixture of Paraloid B-72 and glass microballoons, applied by injection with a syringe, and then in-painted with acrylics to match the surface.

Photos by Céline Wachsmuth Detail of before, during, and post treatment of a section of the block. There was significant lifting and destabilization over much of the block’s surface.

Photos by Céline Wachsmuth Detail of before, during, and post treatment of a section of the block. This section was floating on the surface, meaning it was no longer attached.

Stay tuned for a final post about the finishing touches on the Kaipure Tomb Chapel project.

The Kaipure Conservation Project is funded through a generous grant from the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) Antiquities Endowment Fund (AEF) which was established though a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Many new faces in the lab…

Posted on by
2

by Williams Project Conservator Alexis North

Yesterday, I was able to make several new friends, when the American section brought these objects up to the lab, in preparation for the reinstallation of our Mexico and Central America gallery:

 These are a group of Zapotec ceramic effigy vessels from Mexico. These types of vessels are usually found in tombs, and their meaning depends on where and how they were buried. They are often found in groups, and with other associated burial materials.

Each of these effigy vessels is elaborately and uniquely decorated. Some have human faces, some are wearing masks, and some even have animal features.

These two vessels (NA6361; 29-41-707) depict humans wearing masks.

Most of these vessels are in good condition, intact or with only small losses. At least two, however, will need a little more conservation to get them ready to display. This vessel was originally covered with a white stucco coating:

Vessel 29-41-702, depicting a masked seated figure.

The stucco is now starting to lift from the surface, and any handling can cause small pieces of the stucco to fall off. It will need to be carefully stabilized before the vessel can go on display.

Detail of the headdress of 29-41-702. The red arrows show areas where the stucco is lifting off the surface of the ceramic.

And this vessel shown below has some loose fragments which will need to be rejoined. Thankfully the amazing duck bill on his face is still intact!

Before treatment photo of 31-26-1.

For (a lot) more information and other examples of these types of vessels, check out the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., and their database on Zapotec effigy vessels.

A typical Tuesday in Kaipure

Posted on by
Reply

Anna O’Neill, Assistant Project Conservator

The Kaipure lab space in the Lower Egypt (Sphinx) Gallery lets visitors observe as conservators work on a tomb chapel wall, but we don’t often have the opportunity to explain what’s going on. So, here’s a glimpse into what we might be doing on any given day.

9:00 am: We arrive in the conservation hallway, drop off our bags and grab a quick cup of tea to warm up before our weekly department meeting.

9:15 am: Department meeting! It’s getting a bit crowded in here with so many conservators working on lots of different projects. We give our updates – “Still working on Kaipure” – and listen to everyone report their progress. Since we spend most of our time working in the Lower Egyptian Gallery, it’s fun to hear all about all the various objects being treated.

10:00 am: Céline finished up the block she was working on yesterday, so our first order of business is to put her completed block back on the red shelves along the back wall and pull out a new pallet for her to work on.

Jonathan brings Big Joe into the lab.

10:15 am: We’ve completely rearranged the lab, clearing space in the middle and in front of the shelves so that we can bring in Big Joe, our forklift (no, really – his name is written on the side). Most of the time, people tend to think of conservation as a very delicate task, but we’ve had to become experts in heavy machinery, too.

Carefully maneuvering Big Joe to pick up a pallet with a completed block.

10:30 am: We use Big Joe to move Céline’s completed block to a shelf, measuring to make sure that it fits, and then raise the tines all the way up to the top shelf. It’s the first time we’ve had to reach this high, so we’ve brought in Bob Thurlow, Special Projects Manager and resident forklift expert, to supervise while we bring down a new pallet. Fortunately, everything goes smoothly and we land the pallet on a wheeled table made specifically to hold the heavy weight of the blocks.

Left, Céline pulls a block from the top shelf – it’s eight feet off the ground, but feels much higher! Right, Making sure the pallet is centered on the rolling table.

10:45 am: It’s time to play Jenga with our workspace again as we put Big Joe back in storage and get our tables back in working position.

11:00 am: Céline begins documenting her new block, which means getting to know every inch of the object. She begins photography and condition mapping, while Jonathan and I get back to work on the pieces we already had out.

12:30 pm: Lunch time!

1:30 pm: We’re back in the lab, each working on our blocks. Céline has finished documenting her new block, so she gets started on the first phase of cleaning – dusting with a soft brush and gentle vacuum.

Jonathan is busy with solvent cleaning, painstakingly rolling tiny cotton swabs saturated with acetone or ethanol over the surface to remove soiling, staining, and other substances that may have accumulated over the nearly 100 years the wall was on display.

Everybody busy at work in the Kaipure lab.

I’ve done all the cleaning I can on my block and now I’ve moved on to stabilizing loose and lifted flakes of paint and stone. This is done by a process we call “edging”, using a syringe to apply a mixture of Paraloid B72 bulked with glass microballoons and fumed silica to fragile areas, then gently shaping it with a solvent-soaked swab so they fill any gaps between flakes and the stone surface. These tiny fills serve multiple purposes: they fill empty spaces so they won’t collapse under pressure; they protect the edges so the flakes won’t be popped off if touched; and they provide light adhesion between the flake and the stone. Once inpainted, the B72/microballoon mixture blends right into the stone, but we feel much better knowing that the surface is more stable.

5:00 pm: The guards are making their rounds in the gallery to make sure all the visitors have left for the day. That means it’s time for us to close up the Kaipure lab for the evening and head home.

All photos by Lucia Scanlan

The Kaipure Conservation Project is funded through a generous grant from the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) Antiquities Endowment Fund (AEF) which was established though a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

A glimpse of upcoming changes

Posted on by
Reply

There are a few new objects on display in the Artifact Lab this week, which give visitors a glimpse of upcoming changes in the museum.

Newly-installed case with objects slated for the renewed Mexico & Central American Gallery

These 4 pieces were recently conserved in the Artifact Lab to prepare them for installation in our forthcoming Mexico & Central America Gallery (from left to right: a stone metate from Costa Rica 11819, two burnished ceramic jars from Mexico 31-41-34 & 87-42-1132, and a ceramic tripod vessel from Costa Rica 2013-11-1) .

You can see many other objects that will be going into that gallery, both on display in our current Mexico and Central America Gallery as well as being worked on in the Artifact Lab.

Artifacts currently being treated in the Artifact lab.

Visit our Building Transformation website to learn more about this gallery, which will look something like this: