This exhibition, on view from November 2, 2012, to February 10, 2013, focused on the field of conservation, the deterioration of objects and archaeological sites, the work of conservators, and the importance of preserving material culture. Click here to enter the on-line version.

From June 8 to September 16, 2012, the Kelsey Museum presented a special exhibition  focusing on the museum’s namesake. Professor of Latin at the University of Michigan from 1889 until his death in 1927, Francis Willey Kelsey built the Department of Latin into one of the most distinguished of its time. His textbooks of Latin and Greek authors became the standard fare in classrooms across the country. He helped to establish and edit the prestigious University of Michigan Humanistic Series, which planted the seed of what is now the University of Michigan Press. A lover of music, Kelsey championed the Ann Arbor School of Music and served as president of the University Musical Society from 1891 to 1927. As a member of the campus planning committee he helped to plan Hill Auditorium. Kelsey’s multiple expeditions to the Mediterranean region laid the groundwork for later Kelsey Museum fieldwork and secured a large part of the museum’s artifact collection. Highlighted throughout the galleries were objects that Kelsey was responsible for acquiring. Beyond the museum’s own collection, the exhibition showcased examples of rare manuscripts and ancient papyri purchased with funds Kelsey raised.

Click here to view the on-line version of the exhibition.

Click here to purchase the book that inspired this exhibition: John Griffiths Pedley's The Life and Work of Francis Willey Kelsey: Archaeology, Antiquity, and the Arts.

Artist and UM Art and Design student John Kannenberg opened his "Hours  of Infinity Part II: Twelve Hours of Infinity" exhibition on Friday March 9, 2012 in the Kelsey's Newberry Hall Corridor. Part I was mounted at the Work Gallery (306 S. State Street). Kannenberg's work for "Hours of Infinity" combined a rigorously  imprecise drawing method with a disciplined approach to sonic observation and documentation. His drawings were inspired by the Egyptian Amduat, examples of  which can be found in the Kelsey Museum collection. The Amduat is an ancient text depicting the journey the sun takes during the twelve  hours of nighttime before being reborn each morning at sunrise. These  cyclical drawings investigate the beautifully absurd imperfection inherent within the human experience of the Infinite. A third component of this project, a site-specific performance called "One Hour of  Infinity," took place on March 23, 2012. This one-hour performance, scattered throughout the Kelsey galleries, combined a rigorously imprecise drawing method, musical compositions based on specific objects in the museum's collection, and digitally manipulated sounds of the museum itself. This unconventional sonic performance explored the beautifully imperfect sense of timelessness experienced by traditional museum audiences. Click here to view a video of the performance and here to purchase the exhibition catalogue.

This exhibition illuminated the historical records of a single village community in the Egyptian countryside during the Graeco-Roman period. It also explored the story of the site’s excavation, initiated by the University of Michigan in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as subsequent and upcoming research on the recovered material and its context. "Karanis Revealed" was presented in two phases. Part I (September 16 to December 8, 2011) looked at aspects of village life during the early centuries of the community under the Ptolemaic dynasty. These include the site’s agricultural cultivation, the role of pagan religions and evidence of more esoteric magical practices. Part II (January 27 to May 6, 2012) followed the changes that took place in Karanis with the beginning of the Roman occupation of Egypt and then later with the advent of Christianity. The displays included collections of Roman glass, tax rolls on papyrus, and the leather breastplate of a Roman soldier. Click here to view motion picture footage from the original excavations.

This small exhibition was presented in conjunction with a fall term course, History of Art 286 “Art and Empire in Antiquity.” The show placed images illustrating ancient Egyptian tropes of the enemy Other in dialogue with a display of household artifacts produced for White America in the early to mid-20th century. These 20th-century artifacts, now called “Black Collectibles,” legitimized demeaning characterizations of African-Americans. Some of them evoke nostalgia for the house slave cooking and serving meals on the old plantation. Others depict African-Americans as carefree smiling or lazy boys eating watermelon or fishing. Some have layers of sexual innuendo. Many use disembodied human forms to convey the impotence of the subject. Some express through visual cues the idea of the Black man as perpetual child or subhuman. By juxtaposing these recent items with ancient images, the installation suggested varying ways in which image saturation and the deployment of images of Otherness on objects of “daily life” may operate. Click here to see some exhibition visitors' comments on "Dominated and Demeaned."

"Dominated and Demeaned" ran October 21, 2011, through January 29, 2012,  in the first-floor elevator alcove of the Upjohn Exhibit Wing.

October 2010 through May 2011. This exhibition presented a series of ultra-large-scale photographs, many over six feet tall, by the renowned Turkish photographer Ahmet Ertug. Focusing on paintings, mosaics, and architecture of the Byzantine world (sixth-fourteenth centuries AD), the photos provided a journey through such venerated sites as Istanbul's Hagia Sophia and Church of Christ of Chora, as well as churches in the Cappadocia region of central Turkey, an area known for hidden Christian retreats hewn out of the region’s unusual volcanic rock formations. Accompanying the photographs were objects from the Kelsey’s collections of Byzantine and Islamic material, including gold coins, manuscript pages (on loan from the University of Michigan Museum of Art), small carvings, pottery, and wooden architectural fragments. 

This special exhibition, the first in the Upjohn Exhibit Wing, ran from November 1, 2009 to July 6, 2010. It featured some of the dramatic aerial photographs that Mary Meader took over Egypt in 1937, before modern development had encroached on the pyramids and other ancient monuments. Also on view were family photographs of Ed and Mary Meader, the benefactors who so generously endowed the Kelsey's William E. Upjohn Exhibit Wing. Go to on-line exhibition.

From January 13 to February 24, 2006, at the Duderstadt center on the University of Michigan north campus, the Kelsey Museum mounted an exhibition on the Roman site of Antioch of Pisidia in Asia Minor (Turkey)—a Hellenistic city refounded by Augustus in 25 BC as a Roman colony. In 1924 Francis W. Kelsey's expedition to Antioch had uncovered an elaborate city gate adjoining an imposing fortification wall. Colonnaded streets led past a large theater to an imperial sanctuary and beyond to a fountain house and bath complex, both fed by a massive aqueduct. The team also uncovered remains of two churches. This exhibition showed archival photographs and documents as well as artifacts from Antioch in the Kelsey collections. It also featured a physical model created with a 3-D printer and a video reconstruction that took viewers on a journey through the virtual city. Go to on-line exhibition.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933), the eminent Greek Alexandrian poet, would no doubt have found himself at home in the Kelsey Museum. He often drew inspiration from the ancient world, particularly the classical and late antique spheres that are so well represented by the Kelsey collections. Cavafy's presence at the Kelsey invites the visitor to contemplate a dialogue between modern poetry and archaeology. Through Cavafy's eyes, the viewer can reconsider the museum's collection of mummy masks, Fayoum portraits, funerary steles, jewelry, textiles, coins, and objects from everyday life.  Cavafy's World:  Ancient Passions

Love them, hate them, use them, abuse them: animals are everywhere in our lives. The argument could be made, however, that they were more important to the peoples of ancient Greece and Rome. U-M undergraduates considered this and many other issues as they designed and helped to organize an exhibition—"Animals in the Kelsey!"

Among the great masterpieces of ancient art, the Villa of the Mysteries fresco paintings have fascinated scholars and inspired visual artists with depictions of women engaged in mysterious rituals. In the 1920s University of Michigan Professor Francis Kelsey commissioned Italian artist Maria Barosso to create a nearly life-sized representation of the Villa frescoes. Exhibited here for the first time in its entirety, Barosso's work was accompanied by a rich array of ancient art and artifacts, providing a fresh look at cultic rites practiced by women in ancient Pompeii. Also included were works of contemporary art inspired by the Villa cycle, which attest to the enduring appeal of its themes and imagery.  Villa of the Mysteries

The enduring importance of fabric in our everyday lives—for clothing, furnishings, symbolic communication, and commerce—is underscored by the study of historic cloth. And, conversely, when we exploit our own experience to imagine ancient cloth artifacts as they were used in the past, then our understanding of the everyday concerns of past lives is greatly enhanced.  The Fabric of Everyday Life, Textiles from Karanis, Egypt

In 1919 and 1920, photographer George R. Swain accompanied Francis Kelsey on an expedition that circled through Europe and the Mediterranean area. The purpose of the expedition was to document sites that were of interest to classical history scholars, as well as to identify sites that might have potential for future excavations. Among Swain's photographic equipment was a Cirkut camera, one of the earliest rotation cameras manufactured for commercial use.

Swain produced a series of magnificent panoramic views of many of the sites he and Kelsey visited. The photographs appear never to have been formally exhibited, nor were many, if any, of them published. This oversight was remedied in part with the exhibit of many of these images in the Kelsey's galleries from January 14 through August 2000. This unique portion of the Museum's photographic archives was displayed, along with a brief introduction to the cameras available to Swain at the time. In addition to his photographic activities, Swain was an avid diarist, and illuminating comments drawn from his journals made these vistas come alive for visitors to the galleries.

The Kelsey Museum houses a unique collection of excavated musical instruments from fieldwork in Karanis and elsewhere in Egypt, as well as artifacts that relate to musical instruments and the people who played them. This exhibition was curated by Terry Wilfong, Assistant Curator of Graeco-Roman Egypt and Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies.  Music in Roman Egypt

Inscribed textiles record valuable information concerning broad historical trends. They document increasing government control over the textile industry, names of officials and rulers associated with these prestige items, the spread of Arabic language, the phenomenal popularity of the written word, as well as the special economic force of gift giving.  Early Islamic Inscribed Textiles

Today we express aspects of our identity in our choice of clothing. This is nothing new: people in ancient societies made similar visual statements. This exhibit, which focused on the 4th to 7th centuries CE, used textiles from the Kelsey Museum's collections to explore the expressive potential of fashion in late antiquity.  Reconstructing Personal Style in Late Antique Egypt

An exhibition that focused on the archaeological site of Sepphoris (known as Zippori in Hebrew), which was once an important city in Roman Palestine. September 7 - December 14, 1997.  Sepphoris in Galilee: Crosscurrents of Culture

A student-produced exhibit exploring food in the ancient world. Fall 1996 - July 21, 1997. Go to on-line exhibition.

An exhibition that examined the evidence for women's lives in ancient Egypt and the wider issues of gender definition and roles. March 14 - June 15 1997.  Women and Gender in Ancient Egypt: From Prehistory to Late Antiquity

Newly rejoined fragments of Roman sculpture from the Flavian dynasty.  Images of Empire

An experimental student-curated exhibition on ways of seeing and exhibiting artifacts in a museum context.  Caught Looking: Exhibiting the Kelsey

The Kelsey's installation of the traveling exhibit loaned by the University of Pennsylvania's University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, as well as an installation of photographs from the Kelsey's permanent collections documenting the First Aswan Dam. Go to on-line exhibition.

University of Michigan Collections and Expeditions.  Byzantium

The Kelsey Museum's collection of Indian block-printed textiles traded to Egypt was acquired from a Cairo dealer during the 1930s and early 1950s, but this 1993 exhibition, researched and organized by Dr. Ruth Barnes, marked the first time the material was displayed in its entirety. Now, in this virtual reinstallation of that exhibition, examples of these medieval trade cloths are again made accessible.  From Riches to Rags: Indian Block-Printed Textiles Traded to Egypt

Francis Willey Kelsey and Armenia, 1919-1920.  Dangerous Archaeology

The Necropolis at Terenouthis in Lower Egypt.  Portals to Eternity

Reflections on the world of Rome ca. 50 BC - AD 650.  Wondrous Glass

Modern Goals, Ancient Intentions: Egyptian Funerary Artifacts in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology.