Penn Museum

Kids with statue and flashlights

Night at the (Penn) Museum

What it’s like to sleep over with mummies and more than 10,000 years’ worth of artifacts.

Gwyneth K. Shaw

seeds found at bartrams garden

Unearthing a botanical legacy, one seed at a time

Painstaking work by Penn Museum archaeobotanist Chantel White and students has verified what the Bartrams sold and exported to Europe in the 1800s, and shed light on the family’s daily dietary habits.

Michele W. Berger ・

Susan Radov leads a tour of the China Gallery with sculptures in the background

A tour of the ancient world—in Mandarin

The Penn Museum offers tours of its exhibits in Mandarin, increasing cross-cultural access to its invaluable assemblage of objects on display, the only known museum in Philadelphia with regularly scheduled tours in the language.

Brandon Baker ・

a 4,000-year-old model of a rowing boat featuring 16 figures

Egypt on display

Penn Museum opens a new Ancient Egypt exhibition to display artifacts and their conservation during its Building Transformation project.

Louisa Shepard ・

A prehistoric city with homes, earthen mounds, and pathways

Marking the winter solstice, from Neolithic times to today

For millennia, people have marked the winter solstice with rituals and celebrations—and they continue to do so today. Penn Museum anthropologists Lucy Fowler Williams and Megan Kassabaum discuss both ancient and contemporary customs associated with attending to the shortest day of the year.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・

A new take on the 19th-century skull collection of Samuel Morton

After unearthing and analyzing handwritten documentation from scientist Samuel Morton, doctoral candidate Paul Wolff Mitchell drew a new conclusion about the infamous 19th-century collection: Though Morton accurately measured the brain size of hundreds of human skulls, racist bias still plagued his science.

Michele W. Berger ・



In the News


Time

Why Indigenous artifacts should be returned to Indigenous communities

The Penn Museum is noted for creating its “Native American Voices: The People—Here and Now” exhibit with the help of tribal representatives.

FULL STORY →

BBC

Gordion: A lost city of legends in central Turkey

Brian Rose of the School of Arts & Sciences and Penn Museum has led excavations at the ancient Turkish city of Gordion since 2007.

FULL STORY →

Philadelphia Inquirer

A burial for 19 Black Philadelphians, 200 years in the making

Penn Museum Director Christopher Woods says that the interment of 19 Black Philadelphians at Eden Cemetery represents a reckoning with the Museum’s colonial past and an act of reconciliation with the local community.

FULL STORY →

ARS Technica

Mummified baboons point to the direction of the fabled land of Punt

Josef Wegner of the School of Arts & Sciences and Penn Museum says that archaeologists have long entertained theories on the locale of ancient Egyptian trading partner Punt, despite the lack of precise directions.

FULL STORY →

Philadelphia Magazine

This new wellness series at Penn Museum will be the best thing you do all winter

Penn Medicine and the Penn Museum have partnered to provide a happy healthy hour this winter, turning the Museum’s galleries into self-care sanctuaries with a rotating schedule of holistic health services.

FULL STORY →

Philadelphia Business Journal

Penn Museum to start work on $54M Ancient Egypt and Nubia galleries project, the largest renovation in its history

The Penn Museum plans to begin renovation on its $54 million Ancient Egypt and Nubia galleries this fall, with remarks from Christopher Woods.

FULL STORY →