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Notes from the Director

As I look back on the activities of the past year, I am, as always, impressed by the intensity and variety of enterprises that characterize life in the Kelsey Museum. A visitor on any given day might see Todd Gerring touring a group of excited third graders around the first floor galleries while Dana Buck is installing cases for an upcoming show in our temporary space; in the basement undergraduates, graduate students, and curators are at work in the Hosmer Lab on Kelsey field projects next to docents gathering to learn the latest on an upcoming exhibition; on the third floor Conservator Brook Bowman and Collections Manager Robin Meador-Woodruff ready fragile objects for exhibit or for loan to another museum while, on the second floor, students study in the library and our able administrative staff, led by Helen Baker, keeps us all on track. In the past year we have mounted two exhibitions, sent two excavations into the field, welcomed 30,000 visitors, and hosted a number of lectures and outreach events, including four family days. Meanwhile study, publication, and the use of the collections for teaching purposes continues on a daily basis. Multitasking is not a new concept in the Kelsey Museum!

I will be viewing next year’s activities, which include the textile exhibition featured in this newsletter and a winter show on the archives of the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, from a distance. It is my sabbatical year, and I will be spending it in Jerusalem as the Annual Professor at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, where I will be writing on the seals found in the Kelsey’s excavations at Tel Kedesh. Laurie Talalay has agreed to serve as Acting Director for the year, and I know I am leaving the Museum in good hands. I can’t keep myself completely away, however. I have scheduled my U.S. lecture tour as the Archaeological Institute of America’s Joukowsky lecturer so that I can attend the openings of both of next year’s exhibitions. I hope to see many of you there.

—Sharon C. Herbert, Director