University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Mission Statement
What is your institution's mission?
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, through its research, collections, and dissemination of knowledge, advances understanding of the world's cultural heritage.
Collections
What are some of the collections offered and how were they obtained? What are some of the most prized/rare artifacts in the collection? Are there visitor favorites?
Thanks to early collecting by Penn archaeologists, anthropologists, and others in the field, the Penn Museum houses almost one million artifacts from cultures around the world, including materials from ancient Egypt, the ancient Mediterranean World, the ancient Near East, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania and Australia. We have archaeological and physical anthropological materials, ethnographic materials, and a wealth of archival field research and photographic and video materials.
Programs
What are some the programs created/administered at the museum?
Popular programs include World Culture Family Days (Celebration of African Cultures, Chinese New Year Celebration), and other family days, including “Harry Potter and the Magical Muggle Museum,” family workshops, and new, a sleepover program for children and their parents or chaperones, “40 Winks with the Sphinx.” Adult programs include Saturday “101” lecture programs (as Egypt 101, Pyramids 101), evening lecture series (as “Great Discoveries,”) and day or weekend-long symposia, including our annual Maya Weekend.
Exhibitions
Are there any upcoming exhibitions you would like to highlight?
Secrets of the Silk Road (February 5 through June 5, 2011) Penn Museum offers the exclusive east coast showing of this major new traveling exhibition from China. In the late 1990s, the western world learned about the existence of an astonishing collection of ancient, and exquisitely preserved, mummies, all excavated in the vast Tarim Basin desert of East Central Asia—a crossroads of the Silk Road. This new exhibition features more than 150 extraordinary objects representing the rich cultural heritage of the region over more than 4,000 years. The materials come from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Museum and the Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology in Urumqi in northwest China. Jewel-encrusted vessels, masks, jewelry, clothing, highly valued silk and other textiles, wooden and bone implements, and coins testify to the remarkable international trade that passed through the region. Perhaps most remarkable, however, are three astonishingly well-preserved ethnically-diverse mummies dating from 1800 BC to AD 400—a man, a woman popularly known as the “Beauty of Xiaohe,” and a child—and related artifacts from those burials. The exhibition is organized by the Bowers Museum, Santa Ana, California, with showings in Santa Ana, and at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, before its 2011 showing at the Penn Museum. Dr. Victor Mair, the exhibition’s catalogue editor and a scholar long involved with the study of the Tarim Basin mummies, is a Penn Museum consulting scholar and Penn Professor of Chinese Language and Literature.
