Past Exhibitions, 1991–2000

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.

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. 

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. Swain produced a series of magnificent panoramic views of many of the sites he and Kelsey visited. 

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. 

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. 

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.

An exhibition that focused on the archaeological site of Sepphoris (known as Zippori in Hebrew), which was once an important city in Roman Palestine.

A student-produced exhibit exploring food in the ancient world.

An exhibition that examined the evidence for women's lives in ancient Egypt and the wider issues of gender definition and roles.

Newly rejoined fragments of Roman sculpture from the Flavian dynasty.

Egyptian Funerary Artifacts in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology.

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. 

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.