Landmark Symposium Held at the Penn Museum
Penn Museum and the United Nations
Penn Museum’s largest object from Alaska—a 15-foot Umiaq, or Iñupiaq boat—journeyed to the United Nations headquarters in New York City, where it took center stage in a new exhibition, The Right to Water and Indigenous Peoples, which ran from May 16 through June 30, 2011. The exhibition, which marked the Tenth Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, highlighted water’s critical relevance to indigenous peoples’ cultural vitality as well as their social and economic well-being, and included contributions from indigenous film and photographic artists from all over the world.
International Archivists Attend Reception at Museum
The Penn Museum Archives was honored to host a group of international film and sound archivists for a reception on November 2, 2010, to celebrate the restoration of one of the Museum’s most interesting films, Matto Grosso: The Great Brazilian Wilderness (1931). The event coincided with the first joint annual meeting of the Association of Moving Image Archivists and the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives. The great significance of Matto Grosso in film production history is that it is likely the first documentary to have used synchronized sound-on-film recording in the field.
Thank You Penn Museum Volunteers!
On April 11, 2011, the annual Volunteer Appreciation Luncheon was held at the Penn Museum. About 250 Museum volunteers offered their time and talents in many departments throughout the year. Over the previous 12 months, volunteers logged an amazing 27,456 hours of service.