Museum Map

What's on View

The Penn Museum hosts special exhibitions in the Merle-Smith Galleries.

The Moundbuilders: Ancient Architects of North America exhibit explores the fascinating story of Native American moundbuilding through a variety of photographs, artifacts, archival materials, and excavation records.

Bearing Witness: Four Days in West Kingston–part art installation, part memorial, and part call to action–sheds light on the "Tivoli Incursion" of May 2010 through compelling video and audio footage featuring firsthand accounts of people directly impacted by the violence.

What's on View

The Classical World Galleries focus on Etruscan Italy, Greece, and Rome, and offer more than one thousand ancient artifacts – including marble and bronze sculptures, jewelry, metalwork, mosaics, glass vessels, gold and silver coins, and pottery.

The Penn Museum holds nearly 25,000 artifacts from the area that encompasses modern Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon, and parts of Syria, the largest collection of artifacts from this region. A sampling is on display in the Canaan & Israel Gallery.

The Japan and China Galleries occupy the Museum's Harrison Wing and Rotunda, which contains one of the largest unsupported masonry domes in the United States (the roof of Harrison Auditorium that supports the floor of the China Gallery). The galleries house one of the finest collections of monumental Chinese and Japanese art in the country, covering some 4,000 years of history.

The Egypt (Mummies) Gallery displays carved reliefs, stone coffins, and 3-dimensional sculpture that testifies to the superb craftsmanship of Egyptian artists and sculptors throughout that country's long history. Ancient Egypt: From Discovery to Display provides visitors a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to walk in the shoes of an archaeologist. Explore the journey artifacts take on their way to museum display, from excavation to conservation to storage and research. Eventually, these objects will become a part of the re-envisioned Ancient Egypt and Nubia Galleries, a much-anticipated cornerstone of the Museum’s Building Transformation.

Part exhibition, and part working laboratory, In the Artifact Lab: Conservation in Action, a glass-enclosed conservation lab brings you right into a museum conservator’s world. See the tools of the trade and watch as conservators work on a wide array of artifacts being prepared for exhibit in the Museum’s signature galleries.