Last spring Research Scientist Susan Alcock received the coveted John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award, which extends over a five-year period. In Fall Term 2000, along with her undergraduate class, she organized and mounted the current exhibition, “Animals in the Kelsey!” During Winter Term she served as a visiting professor at Harvard University.
Conservator Brook Bowman has been selecting textiles and preparing mounts for “The Fabric of Everyday Life” (see story). She recently couriered a loan of 14 objects to the Dennos Museum Center in Traverse City. Soon she will install the Villa of the Mysteries watercolors in their new museum-quality cabinet. Four students assisted her during Winter Term: Alan Campana did conservation work on a bronze coin. Monica Kennedy, Lacy Carra, and Emily Modrall helped implement the Integrated Pest Management program on the Museum’s third floor. Last year’s intern Melissa Schaumberg is working on a mummy mask at the Kelsey.
Research Scientist John Cherry delivered the keynote address to the International Conference “Archaeological Field Survey in Cyprus: Past History, Future Potentials” at the University of Cyprus, in Nicosia, December 12, 2000. In April he published S. E. Alcock, J. F. Cherry, and J. Elsner (eds.), Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece (Oxford University Press).
Curator of Hellenistic and Roman Collections Elaine Gazda spent Winter Term teaching Etruscan art and archaeology for the University’s academic year program in Florence. During Fall Term she curated the major exhibition “The Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii: Ancient Ritual, Modern Muse” at the Kelsey and the U-M Museum of Art, as well as editing the 261-page catalogue for the show and organizing a two-day conference on the Villa murals. A collection of papers that she edited, The Ancient Art of Emulation: Studies in Artistic Originality and Tradition from the Present to Classical Antiquity, will soon be published by the University of Michigan Press.
Curator of Dynastic Egyptian Collections Janet Richards is planning her exhibition “Society, Economy, and the Individual in Ancient Egypt,” scheduled for Fall 2002. Her coedited book, Order, Legitimacy and Wealth in Ancient States, was published in December 2000 by Cambridge University Press. She delivered public lectures on her excavations at Abydos at the Denver Museum of Natural History and the University of Toronto in Fall 2000 and conducted further excavations in the Abydos Middle Cemetery from January to March 2001.
Curator of Postclassical Collections Thelma Thomas served as consulting curator for the Byzantine Egypt gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new Mary and Michael Jahairis Galleries of Byzantine Art, which opened in November. In January she presented a lecture there on “Byzantine Egypt: Art and Society” to celebrate the new installation. She also spoke on an aspect of the Kelsey’s collection of late Roman textiles from Karanis at the Seventh International Congress of Coptic Studies in Leiden in September. She continues to conduct research on this collection as she prepares the exhibition “The Fabric of Everyday Life: Historic Textiles from Karanis, Egypt” (see story). She also consulted on the new Byzantine Egypt installation of the Walters Art Gallery, which will include items from the Kelsey Museum in its display.
Curator of Graeco-Roman Egyptian Collections Terry Wilfong gave a paper on Coptic texts in the Kelsey Museum at the Seventh International Congress of Coptic Studies in Leiden last August. His small exhibition “Gender in the Ancient World” opened in the fall 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; it remains on display through Fall 2001. He gave presentations in connection with Egyptian exhibitions in Traverse City and Toledo in April and will give a seminar in Oxford in June. He plans to spend this summer continuing work on the publication of the Karanis musical instruments and experimenting with new media for the Kelsey Museum computer kiosk.
