Grants Received
From the National Endowment for the Humanities, $74,915 toward Phase II research on the Gordion Project.
Also from the National Endowment for the Humanities, $94,357 to support an archival program for field records.
From the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, $18,500 fo an archival program for Museum administrative records.
From the Smithsonian Institution (National Museum Act), $10,348 for a conservation internship.
Exhibitions
Dowries from Kutch: A Women’s Folk Art Tradition.
September 5—October 19, 1980 in the William Pepper Hall of the Museum. This exhibition of folk art assembled by the Museum of Cultural History, University of California at Los Angeles, and circulated by the International Exhibitions Foundation, surveys marriage customs in Kutch, an isolated and rather desolate section of northwestern India near the Pakistan border. It includes textiles, embroideries, brass and copper household articles, and jewelry, all of which constitute a bride’s dowry. There are also panels of photographs showing the area and the people. There is a catalogue prepared by the Museum of Cultural History.
The Egyptian Mummy: Secrets and Science September 27, 1980—August 31, 1981 in the Nubian Gallery of the Museum. Assembled by the Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology, MASCA, and the Egyptian Section, it explores in depth ancient Egyptian religious beliefs as they concerned the life after death and the steps taken to insure that it would be an idyllic one. The exhibition includes three mummies and numerous related objects, statuary, amulets, canopic jars, tools and models of the interior of tombs, as well as x-ray studies of the mummies themselves. A book of the same title as the exhibition is also being produced.
An Honor for Dr. Sjoberg
Dr. Ake W. Sjoberg, Curator of Tablet Collections in the Near Eastern Section of the Museum, has been elected to the American Philosophical Society for his outstanding accomplishments in research.
Splendors of the Pharaohs
The trip from February 4 to 21 to Egypt, the land that is literally a living museum, is co-sponsored by the University Museum and the Field Museum in Chicago, host of the Treasures of Tutankhamun of 1977. Tour members will cruise the Nile for two weeks in our chartered luxury ship and experience more than 5000 years of history. Limited to only 30 people, the group will have specially arranged tours to Museum excavations and other sites not usually seen by tourists. We will have two lecturers: Dr. David Silverman, Assistant Curator for the Museum’s Egyptian Section and Assistant Professor of Egyptology at the University of Pennsylvania, and Ms. Del Nord, Ph.D. candidate at the Oriental Institute and Lecturer for Harvard University Extension.
Exotic India
Dr. Gregory L. Possehl of the University Museum’s South and Southeast Asia Section will be taking a tour to India between February 20 and March 7, 1981. In addition to the sights of Delhi and Bombay the tour includes the Taj Mahal, tombs of the Mughal emperors, the fabulous temples of Khajuraho and the sacred city of Benares.
For further information about both tours, please write or call the Women’s Committee of the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 33rd and Spruce Streets, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104. (215) 243-4023.