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Many of the Kelsey's recent special exhibitions are preserved in on-line versions. Click on the titles below to view them. Building a New Rome: The Imperial Colony of Pisidian Antioch 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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. A student-produced exhibit exploring food in the ancient world. Fall 1996 - July 21, 1997.
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. Newly rejoined fragments of Roman sculpture from the Flavian dynasty.
An experimental student-curated exhibition on ways of seeing and exhibiting artifacts in a museum context.
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. University of Michigan Collections and Expeditions.
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. Francis Willey Kelsey and Armenia, 1919-1920. The Necropolis at Terenouthis in Lower Egypt. Reflections on the world of Rome ca. 50 BC - AD 650.
Modern Goals, Ancient Intentions: Egyptian Funerary Artifacts in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. |
