Kelsey Museum of Archeology
The Kelsey Museum of Archeology is an American museum for archaeological finds in Ann Arbor , which is part of the University of Michigan .
history
The museum was founded in 1929 from the collection of Francis W. Kelsey (1858–1927), Professor of Latin at the University of Michigan. As a classical archaeologist, Kelsey organized and directed the first excavation by ancient scholars from the University of Michigan in the Middle East. He organized further excavations afterwards, including in Antioch in Pisidia , Carthage and Karanis . To this day, the Kelsey Museum carries out excavations, which are integrated into the curriculum of the university's archeology students. Other well-known excavation sites in the past were the St. Catherine's Monastery on Sinai (1958–65) and Seleukia in present-day Iraq (1927–32 and 1936–37).
The collection was shown after Kelsey's death in 1929 at the Newberry Hall, which since 1972 in the National Register of Historic Places under monument stands. Newberry Hall was built in 1892 for the Students Christian Association, who from 1928 rented the building to the university for the exhibition of the archaeological collection. In 1937 the university bought the building. In 1953 the museum was officially named after Francis W. Kelsey as the founder of the university's archaeological collection. Between 2003 and 2009, a new wing with a floor area of 1,900 m² was added to the building, in which parts of the collection have been shown ever since. Temporary exhibitions are now taking place in Newberry Hall, as well as meeting and office space.
The museum's collection consists of more than 100,000 artefacts , dating from prehistory and early history to the Middle Ages , and mostly from ancient Greek and Roman cultures as well as from pre-dynastic and Greco-Roman Egypt. About two thirds of the artifacts come from our own excavations, while one third came into the collection through purchases and donations.
Kelsey began his teaching collection in 1893 with the purchase of 108 objects (lamps, vases, etc.) from the clergyman Alfred Louis Delattre (1850–1932), who carried out excavations near Carthage. That same year, Kelsey acquired more than 1,000 other artifacts from traders around the Mediterranean. In addition, several thousand ancient coins were donated to the university. Kelsey continued his collection activities until his death in 1927, during which time he acquired clay objects and utensils, terracotta figures, Egyptian gravestones and Greek scrolls from Egypt. In 1925 he commissioned an Italian painter to make copies of the wall paintings from the Mystery Villa in Pompeii as watercolors. The watercolors are almost 1: 1 and are shown today in a specially air-conditioned room in the museum. In 1924, the University of Michigan began a new chapter in the history of the collection with the first excavation: more than 45,000 objects in the collection come from the excavations in Karanis from the Greco-Roman period in Egypt. Until about 1965, new artifacts were added to the collection through excavations. Since then, as a result of a change in the handling of finds, as shown in the 1970 UNESCO Convention against Illegal Trade in Cultural Property , the focus of new acquisitions has shifted to photo documentation. Excavations are still being carried out, but finds remain in the country of origin.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Literature by and about Francis W. Kelsey in the WorldCat catalog . His estate is owned by the University of Michigan. ( Finding aid ( memento of the original from June 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. )
- ↑ Past Fieldwork ( Memento of the original dated February 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the Kelsey Museum of Archeology website. (Retrieved February 5, 2009.)
- ↑ Past fieldwork: Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai ( Memento of the original from September 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the archives of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) at the University of Michigan.
- ↑ Past fieldwork: Seleucia on the Tigris ( Memento of the original from September 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the archives of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) at the University of Michigan.
- ^ National Register of Historic Places - Building # 72000660
- ↑ Convention against illegal trade in cultural property at the German UNESCO Commission
- ↑ Collection History ( Memento of the original from February 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the Kelsey Museum of Archeology website. (Retrieved February 5, 2009.)
Coordinates: 42 ° 16 ′ 36.3 " N , 83 ° 44 ′ 27.6" W.