Our cover image offers a glimpse behind the scenes this past spring, as Bill Wierzbowski, Keeper, American Section, worked with Head of Preparations Ben Neiditz (not pictured) to install a new commission in Native American Voices by X̱’unei Lance Twitchell and Yéil Ya-Tseen exploring language loss and current efforts in the Tlingit language community (page 24). It also documents the COVID-19 era at the Penn Museum, where, since July 2020 when City of Philadelphia guidelines eased, staff from many areas across the Museum worked onsite observing stringent safety guidelines to install new exhibitions and displays, steward and preserve the collections, and continue to serve faculty, students, and visitors. Learning Lessons: Engaging Our University Community (page 44) is another COVID-19 snapshot introducing the undergraduate curatorial interns who pivoted the Student Exhibition Program to create a series of virtual programs tied to the Provost’s Year of Jazz.
As our operations return to normal this summer, we acknowledge and thank our staff for their dedication and flexibility, our students and faculty for their continued engagement, and our visitors, members, and donors for their loyal patronage and support throughout the pandemic. We also look forward to the special exhibition The Stories We Wear, opening on September 25. Expedition’s Guest Editor Alisha Adams interviewed Head of Exhibitions Jess Bicknell and Curators Lauren Ristvet, Jane Hickman, and Sarah Linn on the exhibition’s goals and development, and the remarkable objects that speak to how what we wear tells our story.
This issue also offers armchair travels to the picturesque, fortified hilltop site of Kalivo in southwestern Albania, courtesy of David Hernandez and Richard Hodges, and to ancient Corinth, where a team of Italian conservators is working on an extraordinary restoration of frescoes from fragments excavated by Charles Williams in the 1980s. And we remember Lee Horne, archaeologist and editor of this magazine from 1990 to 1996, and, through his own words, George F. Bass, founding father of underwater archaeology.
AMANDA MITCHELL-BOYASK
PUBLISHER