Travel the Trade Routes / Find Trade Goods to “Treasure”
Treasures . . . From the Silk Road to the Santa Fe Trail—an exciting new Show and Sale of fine arts from traditional cultures—premiers at the Penn Museum with an Opening Night Preview on Thursdays, October 27, and continues with a three-day public run, October 28–30. Presented by The Women’s Committee to benefit the Museum’s educational programs.
A major addition to the U.S. marketplace, Treasures gathers more than 40 distinguished dealers from the U.S. and abroad for Philadelphia’s first annual sale of exceptional fine art, antiques, carpets, and textiles exclusively from Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. A wide selection of rigorously vetted 18th, 19th, and 20th century works showcases distinctive cultural and artistic traditions. Honorary Chair Mary McFadden, haute couture designer and textile scholar whose creations are often inspired by traditional cultures, will speak on “Symbols, Goddesses, and Ancient Textiles,” Saturday, October 29, at 4 p.m.; book signing and reception to follow.
TREASURES … also features dealer talks, Museum tours, a special show (“Adornable You”), and an International Café. General Admission: $15; Museum members: $12. Includes Show catalogue. Hours: Friday/Saturday, October 28/29, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sunday, October 30, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Show production by Caskey-Lees (http://www.caskeylees.com). For Opening Preview and lecture tickets, group rates, and information, call 215-898-9213, email treasures@museum. upenn.edu, or visit http://www.museum.upenn.edu.
Chama Polychrome Pottery Conservation Presentation
Funded by the Getty Grant Program, the year-long conservation of the Museum’s collection of Maya polychrome pottery from the site of Chama (Guatemala) was the focus of a poster presentation at the Society for American Archaeology meetings in Salt Lake City, Utah (March 30–April 3). Elin Danien coordinated the project, Lynn Grant was the conservator, and Gene Ware (Brigham Young University) did the multi-spectral imaging of the pottery.
Visiting Iranian Scholar
Masoumeh Kimiaie (above right) of the Free University of Tehran, Central Branch, visited the Museum in April and May 2005. Sponsored by the American Institute of Iranian Studies, she came to use the botanical collections from Iran and Turkey housed in MASCA and to work with the Museum’s paleoethnobotanist, Naomi F. Miller (above left). Masi’s research on ancient Iranian plant materials from several sites on the Marv Dasht plain will complement the study of environment and land use in the same region where the Museum sponsored major excavations at Malyan in the 1970s.
Penn Museum Launches NAGPRA Website
As a result of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), the Penn Museum recently launched a website that focuses on the Museum’s activities with numerous Native American tribes. The site—a continuous work-in-progress with updated material—features background information on NAGPRA, summaries of repatriations made by the Museum, and more. Since the passage of NAGPRA in 1990, the Museum has been actively involved in an ongoing dialogue with Native American and Native Hawaiian groups to reevaluate the ownership of human remains, funerary and sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony in the Museum’s collection. Visit http://www.museum.upenn. edu/nagpra to learn more.
John Harris, Museum Volunteer and Maya Glypher Extraordinaire Honored
During this year’s Maya Weekend, Museum volunteer John Harris was honored in recognition of his 80th birthday. An avocational expert on Maya glyphs, John is the author of Understanding Maya Inscriptions, now in its 2nd edition. Instrumental in founding the Museum’s Pre-Columbian Society, he still leads its monthly glyph group and writes articles on Maya inscriptions for their publication, The Codex. He has co-taught glyph courses in Penn’s Anthropology Department and leads glyph workshops during the Museum’s annual Maya Weekend. To mark his birthday, Simon Martin, the Museum’s Maya epigrapher, designed an appropriate glyphic inscription modeled on the Museum’s famous Stele 14 from the site of Piedras Negras, Guatemala.