Since we often focus on cool objects in this blog, I thought I would give you a little peek into all the other stuff we do, and Im going to illustrate this with a photo of my messy desk / lab bench. The Kelsey today houses more than 100,000 artifacts, ranging from prehistoric to medieval times. Bruker Tracer 5g handheld XRF spectrometer positioned on a tripod over KM 21114, a limestone funerary stela from Terenouthis, Egypt, late 2ndearly 4th century CE. Enter the Kersey Historical Museum to take a step back in time. Our Education Department will be happy to help you arrange a tour for your group. Be sure to stay tuned for more cool images from our new scope! Can you make out the (dare I say?) As always, there is a lot going on in the Conservation Lab! So here are two: First is KM 6449, a Harpocrates figurine standing next to a stove piled with bread, holding a pot, and leaning on an amphora. The past six months have really flown by, havent they? The Fleming Administration Building was designed by the famous modernist architect Alden B. Dow, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Time has no meaning anymore but luckily, we have our Ugly Object blogroll to keep us centered. How was the experience of presenting at the AIA? We dont know where she got it, or why she had it. We have several generous sponsors for this work, including the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, which will be funding conservation work at the site through a large Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation grant. These are consistent with barium sulfate, cobalt blue, and zinc whitepigments that were introduced in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Beazley Archive includes the world's largest collection of images of ancient figure-decorated pottery. About this Item Record Details. Next up is a messy clipboard with a flow chart that Im consulting for identification of ancient dyes, and this overlays all my notes about the multispectral imaging Im doing. I have learned a great deal and I am looking forward to continuing this work when I come back from my year in Athens! Thanks to our new NEHfunded XRF spectrometer, we now know more about the paint materials that were used to create this portraitand it seems to confirm what our curators have long suspected. Keep tuning in. Museums - Classical Archaeology & Art - LibGuides at University of There are numerous reasons why certain objects remain in storage, but their potential for research and adding to our knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East is not one of them. As of January 21, 2013 the High Plains Library District has incorporated our library as a mini-branch. Aims to provide biographical and bibliographical information on classical scholars from the end of the eighteenth century to the current day. Here are some highlights! Voting Now Open for Ugliest Object of 2022! We are closed on Mondays. Access to U-M libraries to check out books and access online journals and databases; Permission to audit (for free . The famous Epistles of St. Paul manuscript is an early copy of part of the New Testament on papyrus, dating to around 200 CE. Within our database, you can even search for family and friends by name. Please visit our Accessibility page for details. [2] are openly available. -Manage and train archives volunteers . Studying each object was a multi-step process: capture a condition record photograph, complete an MSI workup, process the MSI photographs, enter the MSI data into the spreadsheet, investigate the pigments with XRF, process the XRF data and enter it into the spreadsheet, record all the data in the appropriate way according to our data-management protocols, and then upload the most important information to the Kelsey Museum database! I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I do! Unless a label says otherwise, all the objects in the Kelsey Museum are real: authentic ancient artifacts with an average age of 2,000 years. The new scope has an extendable arm that will allow us to perch the instrument over large objects, as well as a built-in camera, so we can simultaneously examine objects and visualize what were looking at in real-time on our laptops. Fans of the Dutch modernist painter Piet Mondrian will note the similarities to Mondrians work. However, there are a number of dining options within walking distance as seen in the Ann Arbor Street District Guide. The University of Michigan Library provides access to these materials for educational and research purposes. We present to you the official ballot for the Kelsey Museum Ugliest Object of 2022. This painted wood panel from Karanis depicts what looks like an eagle, and around its neck is a gold collar. Newberry Hall is now used for museum administrative offices, classroom space, lectures, and special events. Second is KM 6578, a figurine of Eros on a swan rising out of waves. I co-presented a paper titled Decolonizing Archaeological Practice at Kushite Sites in Sudan. Basically, the main point was that local communities ought to be full participants in archaeological projects in almost all stages of the project. I love that you are as excited about ancient color as we are, however, I know your research interests go beyond this topic. Copyright permissions may be different for each digital However, everything was not exactly as it looked to the eye. No. Search Collections | U-M LSA Kelsey Museum of Archaeology They both have some of the best-preserved color on any of the terracottas in the Kelsey collection. We worked on a variety of things, including objects from the serdab of Weni the Elder, as well as newly excavated artifacts, alongside our Egyptian conservator colleagues Hamada Sadek and Ahmed Abdullah. We found the elements barium, iron, lead, nitrogen, sulfur, and zinc in the background and in the womans hair and robe, as well as cobalt in the blue beads of her necklace. C: I love those two! Kelsey Museum of Archaeology | U-M LSA This semester Ive been given the opportunity to work with Carrie and Suzanne as an intern here in the Kelsey Conservation lab. The illustrated catalogue, which is currently in production here at the Kelsey, focuses on archaeological context and object biographies, following each piece from its creation to eventual deposition in the Kelsey Museum. About 1,500 objects are on display in the Upjohn Exhibit Wing or appear in special exhibitions; the rest are maintained in climate-controlled storage in the basement of the Upjohn Building. While I am sad to be away from the Color Project and figurines in the Kelsey, I am very excited to see if my better-trained eye can pick out more traces of color on different objects on display now that I have a better understanding of the different pigments in use in the ancient world. Record; 1963.04.0006; Collection; Kelsey Museum of Archaeology; Bookmark; Its also interesting for me to see animal bones which were taken from Jebel Barkal [a U of M excavation in Sudan close to El-Kurru] to be sorted and identified in the laboratory. When I first joined the project and Suzanne and Carrie were deciding on the list of objects to study, this object was my first request. The Kelsey is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Day. images This data will then be compared to a database of tree-ring measurements and interpreted by Dr. Blondel in a future academic paper to help date the objects. A few times a year, we offer public tours of Newberry Hall and the Fox memorial window designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Looks pretty nice, right? Go to our Accessibility page for information about accessible parking. For more information about the museum, its collection and offerings, please visit the Kelsey Museum online. Our attention now turns to making our small museum grow. They have a weird element (chromium!) The Kelsey Museum has two human mummies and several animal mummies in its collection. Learn about the railroad and its impact to the Kersey area. 49 The Kelsey Museum collection includes mummies of a cat and three birds (probably falcons), as well as the decorated head from a cat mummy. Kelsey Museum of Archaeology (Online Collection) Digital access to the Kelsey Museum Artifacts Database, an online version of the museum catalogue intended to aid researchers. Can you tell our readerswhy do you think its important to study color on archaeological materials? Auburn, California. And speaking of fakes, check out this little guy. Kelsey Museum's Profile | The Conversation Journalist | Muck Rack The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology Art & Artifact Collection represents the art and archaeological artifacts of the ancient Mediterranean world and its supporting archival collection, held at the Kelsey Museum at the University of Michigan. All we ask for is acknowledgment. Being back thereand being a part of the Weni projectwas such a thrill. Cranes pulled down pieces of the building bit by bit, leaving the interior structure exposed to curious passersby. In November, Suzanne and I gave papers at the American Society of Overseas Researchs annual meeting in Boston, where Suzanne presented her research on gender equity in museums and I participated in a workshop on Roman-Egyptian funerary portraits. Hello, friends of the Kelsey Blog! The Kelsey's 100,000+ The Town of Kersey and its elected officials and employees are not responsible for the content of this page. All of this can be done without removing a paint sample from the artifact. The inside structure of the Fleming Administration Building visible with an entire exterior wall removed. kind of term in three years. - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more. In January, Suzanne traveled to Jebel Barkal, Sudan, where she is directing site preservation with her team of conservators and conservation architects including Elmontaser Dafalla, David Flory, and Sefian Mutwakil. The museum is a unit of the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. L: Next year I will be in Athens as a member of the American School of Classical Studies and part of the program involves site and museum visits all over Greece. Not demolished, but deconstructed; pulled apart bit by bit, very carefully, because it is located near a dormitory, a plaza, the student union, the parking garage where I park, and a bunch of frequently trafficked sidewalks. How was New Orleans? I had not touched chemistry since high school and suddenly all these articles on X-ray fluorescence (XRF) were discussing different elemental compositions of pigments and other articles on MSI were presenting data on different wavelengths of light and what this meant for showing traces of pigments. And I love that its burned, like an oil lamp should be! I was completely blown away when I was first told that ancient sculpture was originally brightly painted, as many of the objects held in museum collections and presented in textbooks are not often discussed in terms of their original color. Main site for one of the most important collections of ancient Greek and Roman art in the world, featuring an image gallery, an online sculpture catalogue, a database of 'Ancient Bronzes in Berlin,' and more. Amulet; Lead - Kelsey Museum of Archaeology A database consisting of images of ancient inscriptions on stone from Eleusis, derived from photographs copyrighted by Professor Kevin Clinto. We feel you, and we promise to do better. We feel you, and we promise to do better. 100 . Digital access to the Kelsey Museum Artifacts Database, an online version of the museum catalogue intended to aid researchers. Online catalogue allows you to browse through holdings reaching from the beginning of coinage in the 7th century B.C. Type of Number Catalogue Number. In its place we now have a Leica S9i stereomicroscope, and I am admittedly geeking out over it. We cant wait to hear all about it. Suzanne, Carrie, and I could not start our work in the lab right away because of COVID restrictions on campus, so the first few months involved a lot of intense reading and research. Keep tuning in. The Kelsey Blog - Behind the Scenes at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology We also have another ancient fake, a mummy in the shape of a dog, made for the cult of one of the Egyptian jackal gods, that contains human child bones (this mummy was featured in the exhibition Death Dogs: The Jackal Gods of Ancient Egypt.) Although the majority of the objects come from University At left there are samples of (modern) building materials weve been testing for use at the Jebel Barkal and El-Kurru archaeological sites in Sudan. Communities should also be able to benefit financially from archaeology. As an intern, Ive been doing a lot of multispectral imaging and XRF analysis for the ongoing NEH Color Research project, but the project Ive been most excited about lately is the treatment of this little bronze statuette (KM 3090). The Kelsey Museum is committed to making its programs and services accessible to everyone. Harrison is interning in the Conservation lab as part of the Museum Studies Undergraduate Program. Back in January, many Kelsey Museum faculty and staff and IPCAA students traveled to New Orleans for the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America.