Penn Museum and a lovely dinner

 25 October 2022

Having scoped out where to buy a transit pass - a pharmacy two blocks away - we head out for the day. This tiny street curves off the main Pennsylvania Avenue, is quiet and quite tiny, close to the art museums, and perfect for our needs.

We take the #49 directly to the Penn Museum and get some nice views of Philadelphia on the way, see the train station where we’ll go on Saturday, and just past the big football field is the Penn Museum. There is only one other person in the lobby, so it is quiet day. We are greeted by a giant red granite Egyptian Sphinx, weighing several tons, with carved hieroglyphics that look like they could have been carved yesterday. We head first to the Near East gallery, which covers the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, and nearby areas. The Penn Museum collections are primarily from the actual research expeditions of Museum staff and Penn faculty going back over 100 years. This gallery was recently renovated, and uses video screens to introduce each area where you can focus on a specific artifact, rather than lots of small things in cases with labels. The cuneiform writing tablets, the beautiful pottery, and seals are impressive, but the jewelry is astonishing. Gold, carnelian, Lapis lazuli, and more are in necklaces, bracelets, huge earring made of the thinnest gold, elaborate headdresses with gold leaves hanging from multi-c9ed beads, and more. While in the gallery, I see someone who looks familiar. It is Jeffrey Brown, the arts and culture reporter for the PBS NewsHour. His crew is here shooting a segment on the Benin bronzes and repatriation, and he recently did a segment on the Native American remains at the Hearst Museum in Berkeley. The Museum’s PR director comes over to us and asks if we would be willing to be filmed seeing the exhibit, and of course we said yes. We admired a display of jewelry woe the cameraman was nearby. Afterwards we spoke with Jeffrey Brown - we told him we are from the Bay Area to visit our daughter, a PhD student in Archaeology, and it turns out he is from Berkeley, and his daughter is a professor of Archaeology at Rice University in Houston! We had an interesting conversation about repatriation and noted how we liked his piece on the Hearst. What a thrill to meet him in person!

On to the Egyptian galleries, the core of the Museum. One huge room has many large scale works on pedestals, and the nearby smaller galleries go deeply into the world of mummies and preservation through the thousands of years of the ancient Egyptian culture. These older galleries are small and definitely need some improved signage. The newer Egyptian galleries, recently renovated, also feature wonderful artifacts including gorgeous sarcophagi, masks, jewelry, and more. A new gallery is for conservation which allows you to see the experts at work, and works awaiting conservation.

Downstairs to see the Benin bronzes, which are indeed masterworks, the revised exhibit shows the “object journey, where an artifact came from and how it got to the museum for many of the items. One case featuring a letter from a military guy who had stolen some items he felt were not worth money but were interesting, thinking of offering them to the Musem, and there they were.

After a quick lunch, we went to a exhibit on U2 spy planes and how their amazingly detail3 images can be used by archaeologists to document how thin*s looked, especially in the Middle East, during the 50s and 60. Then additional Egyptian galleries, and we peeked behind the curtain of the new Eastern Mediterranean gallery which is what Madeleine is working on. We also saw an amazing Carthaginian mosaic IN THE FLOOR where people could walk on it. How this was not protected I do not know, but it was stunning. It was time to head back to meet Madeleine for diner, so back to the #49 bus and close to the Airbnb.

Madeleine had scored a reservation on Vetri Cucina, the Chez Panisse of Philadelphia. We took a Lyft there and had a wonderful four-course dinner with amuse-bouche and palate cleaner, and Barney got 5e 22nd parings so w could taste those also. It was delicious, beautifully served, and introduced us to some interesting new flavors. We especially liked the scallop ravioli and the onion crepe and multi-meat tortellini. 

We headed back to Madeleine’s apartment and got to see her place for the first time. It is so nice and cozy, filled with the artwork she has collected over the years, and she seems very settled there. We had a good chat about local politics and National issues, and saw a beautiful mosaic mural on a house. We walked back to our airbnb after a lovely first day in Philadelphia.