Visiting Curator of Conservation Brook Bowman has completed an inventory and reorganization of tools and supplies in the conservation laboratory. The lab now has a computer-accessible inventory. With the assistance of volunteer Thyra Throop, Brook also packed and sent thirty-seven small household objects for loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her largest project has been conserving the watercolors by Maria Barosso to be featured in the “Villa of the Mysteries” exhibition this fall (story).
Research Associate John Cherry is on sabbatical leave for the academic year 19992000, with assistance from a Michigan Humanities Award. He has been doing research on regional studies and landscape archaeology, writing a substantial article (commissioned by the American Journal of Archaeology) on the impact of field surveys on our understanding of Aegean prehistory, and completing a monograph on fieldwork in the region of Nemea, Greece. He delivered a paper at the Fifth Aegean Round Table of the Sheffield Centre for Aegean Archaeology, England, in January, and in March he was a keynote speaker at the First International Cotsen Workshop at UCLA. Much of his time continues to be absorbed in coediting the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology.
Kristin Hannold, the Kelsey’s new half-time Assistant Registrar, is an old hand at working in the Kelsey registry. She first volunteered there while a U-M undergraduate concentrating in classical archaeology (B.A. 1992). More recently she has done graduate work at SUNY Buffalo and continues to work full-time at Borders.
Curator of Photographs/Coordinator of Collections Robin Meador-Woodruff curated “Surrounded by the View: Panoramic Photographs from the Kelsey Museum Archives,” which opened in January. Last fall she worked intensively with Kelsey computer records in preparation for Y2K. She also audited an Appraisal of Archives class to prepare for work with the Kelsey Museum Archives this summer.
At right: During the opening reception for “Surrounded by the View,” which runs through July 2, Robin Meador-Woodruff (right), curator of the exhibition, speaks with Thelma Thomas.
Curator of Dynastic Egyptian Collections Janet Richards directed a three-month excavation season in the late Old Kingdom necropolis at Abydos, Egypt (story). She gave public lectures at the Cairo Institute of the American Research Center in Egypt and at the Supreme Council for Antiquities Sohag Inspectorate/Sohag University (southern Egypt). She delivered papers at the International Congress of Egyptology in Cairo in March and at the annual meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt in Berkeley in April. She also began research for her exhibition “Society and Economy in Ancient Egypt,” scheduled for Fall 2002. She will spend July and August at Cambridge University finishing her monograph on the social dimensions of Egyptian mortuary practice. Her coedited volume Order, Legitimacy and Wealth in Ancient States will be published by Cambridge University Press in September.
Curator of Greek and Ancient Near Eastern Collections Margaret Cool Root co-led a Smithsonian Institution tour to Iran in May 1999, marking her first return to Iran since the Islamic Revolution. Her “The Cylinder Seal from Pasargadae: Of Wings and Wheels, Date and Fate” appeared in Iranica Antiqua. Numerous articles and a book are in press, others almost finished. After a five-year term chairing the Department of the History of Art, she has been on leave in 1999–2000 with the aid of a University of Michigan Humanities Fellowship. Funds for archaeological project costs were awarded by the Iran Heritage Foundation.
At right: Margaret Root returns to Persepolis, Iran, after twenty years.
Associate Director Lauren Talalay will spend July in Greece in a study season for the Southern Euboea Exploration Project. In September she delivered a paper at the annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in Bournemouth, England. She was a presenter at the conference “Children’s Learning through Objects and Experience,” held at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum. Her review of several books on goddesses will appear in the October issue of American Journal of Archaeology. A review of M. Gimbutas’ The Living Goddess was published electronically in Bryn Mawr Classical Review. In addition, she coauthored an article on the Kelsey traveling kits for Publish or Perish, Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Annual Chacmool Conference (University of Calgary Press 2000).
Curator of Postclassical Collections Thelma K. Thomas has had an eventful year. She gave birth to a son, Lucas, in October. Her book, Late Antique Egyptian Funerary Sculpture: Images for This World and the Next (Princeton 2000) appeared in February. In July she will present a paper at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, England. She continues to work on her next Kelsey exhibition, “The Fabric of Everyday Life: Textiles from Karanis” (scheduled for Fall 2001) and to enjoy her new administrative role in the Graduate School, where she is Associate Dean for the Arts and Humanities.
Curator of Graeco-Roman Egyptian Collections Terry Wilfong completed his term as editor of Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists in January. On leave for Winter Term, he is working on his catalogue of the Karanis musical instruments, some of which were featured in his recent “Music in Roman Egypt” exhibition. In connection with this project, he has been doing research in England and the Netherlands on comparable musical instruments from Graeco-Roman Egyptian sites. This summer, he will prepare a small exhibition (opening October 13) in honor of the reopening of Lane Hall as home for the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and the Women’s Studies Program and also work on getting the Kelsey Museum’s interactive computer station into the galleries.
