Art History

Visit the Penn Museum’s Sphinx this Weekend, or Wait Another 4 to 6 Years

The Sphinx at the Penn Museum will be on display for a final weekend prior to a four- to six-year renovation.

Japanese Internment--Library of Congress

English professor explores poetic expressions of Japanese-American internment

Josephine Park, professor of English and interim director of the Asian American Studies Program, on the poetry that originated in Japanese-American internment camps, and poetry by incarcerated populations.

Monumental project rethinks public art in Philadelphia

As part of Monument Lab, a Philadelphia public art and history project, three PennDesign Fine Arts professors joined artists and residents to answer the question, ‘What makes a monument in the 21st century?’

Iraqi, Syrian Guides Bring Views to Philadelphia Museum

The Penn Museum has welcomed four new participants to Global Guides, a program designed to help contextualize historic content from the Middle East. “People who come from these places, even in contemporary times, can find a connection with the objects,” said Ellen Owens, the museum’s director of learning programs.

Penn Professor André Dombrowski teaches an art history curatorial class.

The world on view

The world is on view at the Arthur Ross Gallery, interpreted by 13 students in André Dombrowski’s history of art curatorial class. They chose more than 100 objects from 14 institutions to represent World’s Fairs from 1851 to 1915.

At What Point Does Crying ‘Lynching’ Trivialize the Word?

Herman Beavers of the School of Arts and Sciences analyzed the problematic use of the word “lynching” to describe celebrities and politicians convicted in the court of public opinion. Beavers said that casual use of the term diminishes the long and brutal history of anti-black violence in the U.S.

A Wish Tree for Peace grows on College Green

One of a series of art installations designed by Yoko Ono, the interactive exhibit had the public pause, reflect, and share their vision for harmony and unity with handwritten tags on young tree branches.

Revealing Penn Museum’s Middle East treasures

Objects that trace the path of human history—from the era of hunting and gathering to the creation of cities—are on display in the Museum’s new Middle East Galleries.

Penn Professors Sarah Guérin, Mary Caldwell, Ada Maria Kuskowski

A medieval confluence

Three newly-hired Penn assistant professors, all transplants to Philadelphia, found each other soon after they arrived and discovered that, although they were in different areas of study, they all focused on the Middle Ages, specifically 13th-century France.

The Montiers: An American Story

Gwnedolyn DuBois Shaw of the School of Arts and Sciences commented on the history of Philadelphia’s Montier family, who owned one of the earliest African-American homesteads and cemeteries in the U.S. (Video)

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