As many of you know, I will soon step down from my year as Acting Director of the Kelsey, and Sharon Herbert will return as Director in September 2002. It has been a wonderful and productive year; I have thoroughly enjoyed working with the talented group of individuals that comprise the Kelsey.
Life at the Kelsey has been extremely busy this past year, and our list of accomplishments for 2001-2002 is impressive. The Kelsey mounted two major exhibitions: “The Fabric of Everyday Life: Historic Textiles from Karanis, Egypt” and “Cavafy’s World,” a three-part exhibition at the Kelsey, the Museum of Art, and the Hatcher Graduate Library. While the former exhibition mined our own extensive collections for the scraps of fabric that inform us about daily life in a Graeco-Roman village, the latter was a transatlantic collaboration, which brought to the States, for the first time, the rare and beautiful manuscripts of the eminent Greek poet C. P. Cavafy. “Cavafy’s World” was a significant departure for the Kelsey, integrating archaeological artifacts with contemporary poetry. We also published two books in conjunction with these shows: Textiles from Karanis Egypt in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology: Artifacts of Everyday Life and “. . . what these Ithakas mean”: Readings in Cavafy. Our most unusual event of the year, however, was the CT scan of the Kelsey’s “boy” mummy. A late night visit to the University of Michigan Hospital generated much excitement and produced unexpected results, as well as a bit of humor (see stories here and here).
Various Kelsey personnel have also been busy selecting and preparing objects for loan shows from coast to coast. We will soon have Kelsey objects on display in both Oregon and New York. The Cooley Memorial Art Gallery on the campus of Reed College will feature approximately ten objects in an upcoming exhibition on changing views of “masculinity” in late antique art, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York will incorporate approximately twenty Kelsey objects in its newly installed Near Eastern galleries.
On the development front, we are delighted to report that more than $25,000 was raised in honor of John G. Pedley on the occasion of his retirement. John was a former director of the Museum, a much admired teacher and mentor at the University, and one of the moving forces in the establishment of the Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology (IPCAA). The John Griffiths Pedley Travel and Research Fund will help doctoral candidates in IPCAA to undertake travel and collect data for their research.
Finally, as you can see from the Staff Update and IPCAA Kudos, everyone was extremely busy delivering papers, publishing, or winning awards!
My warmest thanks to all members of the Kelsey Museum for a terrific year!
—Lauren Talalay, Acting Director
