The Penn Museum regrets to announce that its specially ticketed “Secrets of the Silk Road” exhibition, originally scheduled for Feb. 5 to June 5, 2011, has been modified, and will open without artifacts and mummies from China, at the request of Chinese officials.
 
The rich, multimedia “Silk Road” gallery experience—featuring text, images, sound, maps, a recreated excavation site and interactive stations—will now be free with regular Museum admission.

The Museum’s extensive “Silk Road” programming—including a “Silk Road Celebration Weekend” on Feb. 5 and 6 featuring live camels, music, a Silk Road trading goods outpost, themed foods and family activities—will take place as scheduled. The “Silk Road Celebration Weekend” will be free with regular Museum admission.

Additional programming includes: an ongoing monthly lecture series on “Great Adventures along the Silk Road”; the “Mummy Symposium: Anatomy of a Mummy” on Saturday, Feb. 26; the international Silk Road Symposium, “Reconfiguring the Silk Road: New Research on East-West Exchange in Antiquity,” on Saturday, March 19; and a talk by Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society, on Sunday, April 17. 

Weekend programs building on the “Silk Road” experience begin Feb. 5 and run through March:  “Mummies: Through Time, Across Continents” (Saturdays, 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and Sundays, 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.) and “Explore the Silk Road” (Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 2 p.m.).

For more information, visit www.penn.museum/silkroad/visit.php.