Exhibitions – The Kelsey Blog

Exhibitions

BIG Object Spotlight #1: Interviews with Kelsey Curators and Staff

By Emily Allison, with Janet Richards, Scott Meier, and Eric Campbell

Museum gallery space with three vitrines containing textiles and ceramic artifacts. The walls are painted green and hold a photo of Byzantine and Islamic artifacts, a TV screen with a slideshow, and a mounted wooden door lintel. Text on the wall reads, “Coming Soon: Byzantine/Islamic Gallery.”
BIG Object Spotlight #1 can be viewed on the second floor of the Kelsey Museum until late October.

If you have spent any time around the Kelsey Museum in the past several years, you may have heard whispers of the acronym “BIG.” Standing for “Byzantine and Islamic Gallery,” BIG refers to the new, permanent gallery that Kelsey curators and staff are hard at work developing. Although the opening of this gallery is still a few years away, a series of “Object Spotlights”—available over the coming months—will allow visitors to receive a small sampling of the artifacts and themes that are yet to come. The first of these Object Spotlights was installed in late June and will be up through the end of October, around which point a new group of artifacts will be available to view.

To learn more about progress on BIG (and more specifically, the development of BIG Object Spotlight #1), I spoke with Janet Richards, Scott Meier, and Eric Campbell—each of whom played key roles in making the opening of the first Object Spotlight a success. 

Janet Richards, our first interviewee, was the lead curator for BIG Object Spotlight #1. She also serves as the Kelsey Museum’s curator for Dynastic Egypt and a professor of Egyptology in U-M’s Department of Middle East Studies.

Emily: To start, can you talk about the Byzantine and Islamic Gallery? Those who are intimately involved with the Kelsey Museum have been aware of the gallery’s ongoing development for quite some time, but how would you describe the gallery and its goals to an external audience?

Janet: In this new permanent Byzantine and Islamic Gallery (BIG), we’ll showcase the Kelsey’s Byzantine and Islamic collections of art and material culture, as well as artifacts relating to early Judaism. We’re lucky to have substantial support from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts for this work. This gallery—initial planning for which has been overseen by a Kelsey curatorial team with input from Paroma Chatterjee, our History of Art colleague who served as a visiting curator in 2020–2021, and an advisory committee of experts in and beyond the University—will fill a critical gap both geographically and chronologically in our new-wing displays. The project gives us the opportunity not only to consider artistic and archaeological remains of the medieval world in western Asia, the Mediterranean, and northeast Africa but also to highlight how this evidence for the human past resonates with the concerns and lifeways of our modern world.

We’re committed to avoiding traditional boundaries and instead exploring the long-term cultural and intellectual interrelationships of these different regions and cultures, through themes such as travel, piety, soundscapes, animals and humans, and the expression of status and identity through material culture. And we can bring to the mix a strong sense of context, thanks to Kelsey excavations at numerous sites relevant to this installation. We want to give our visitors a sense of real people and their commodities sharing and moving between lived landscapes and intercultural dialogues, all materialized through a wide array of media—coins, textiles, visual productions, glassware, domestic productions, architecture, and spaces.

Emily: What is your role in the development of BIG, and more specifically, in the development of BIG Object Spotlight #1?

Janet: I’m one of the Kelsey faculty curators; my own work is in the Middle East, specifically on the Egyptian Nile Valley of much earlier periods. For 2022–2023, I was acting project manager and lead curator for the Byzantine and Islamic Gallery project. Exhibitions, especially permanent galleries, are a multiyear process; so with the curatorial team and Scott Meier (the Kelsey’s exhibits preparator), I developed the idea of a series of BIG Object Spotlight installations to give Kelsey visitors insight into the process as it unfolds. In this way, we can give visitors and students access to key artifacts and themes to watch for in the eventual permanent gallery.

Even a comparatively compact installation like this requires the collaboration of a village! We owe BIG Object Spotlight #1 to the efforts of Kelsey professional staff: Scott Meier, Eric Campbell (graphic designer), Emily Allison (editor), Michelle Fontentot (collections manager), Carrie Roberts and Suzanne Davis (conservators), and Tamika Mohr (chief administrator). The curatorial team included Nicola Barham, Terry Wilfong, and myself; curatorial assistant and IPAMAA graduate student James Nesbitt-Prosser (who sole-authored the in-depth content on the in-gallery monitor); and our new visiting curator Christy Gruber of the U-M History of Art Department, who generously shared her expertise even though she was on sabbatical. Our wonderful Kelsey docents, in a session I had with them and Stephanie Wottreng Haley (community and youth educator), came up with the idea of the colorful map you’ll see throughout the exhibition!

Emily: Can you walk us through some of the artifacts featured in BIG Object Spotlight #1? Why were they chosen? What do they tell us about the ancient and medieval Byzantine and Islamic world?

Janet: This installation highlights three different categories of artifacts in our collections, three different media, three geographic areas of the ancient and medieval Middle East, and an assortment of our key themes.

Museum vitrine containing two tan circular flasks. One is intact with two handles; the other is broken with only one remaining handle.

Two ceramic pilgrimage flasks (visible at left; KM 88209 and KM 30043), one from Egypt and one from Iraq, are a type of object produced from the 1st century BC and then manufactured in the thousands from the 5th to 7th century AD at pilgrimage sites. Such flasks were either carried by individual pilgrims, circulated among church and secular elites, or simply traded internationally as exotic commodities.

Two inscribed cotton textiles (known as tirāz) are from Yemen and Egypt. They show the visitor two styles of this type of textile: one bears a Kufic (Arabic) inscription reading, “Dominion belongs to Him [God]. Blessing to its owner.” The other is decorated with a colorful motif of rabbits. Such textiles were typically given as gifts to members of a ruler’s court as a marker of social status, but they also had religious significance—in Egypt, tirāz textiles were often used in burial rituals.

Finally, a carved wooden door lintel (see below), dating to the 12th century AD and probably from Cairo, Egypt, is an example of the long history of inscribing prayers on door lintels, a practice that bridges pagan, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. These materialized prayers, occurring in domestic as well as sacred contexts, not only provided blessings to people passing beneath them but also served the magical purpose of warding off evil. This panel reads, “A perfect blessing, all-inclusive grace, and lasting felicity.”

A long, narrow piece of wood with carved writing.
Inscribed door lintel (KM 10201).

Emily: What challenges did you face in the development of this initial Spotlight case?

Janet: Choosing colors for the BIG Spotlight space on the second floor of the Kelsey’s new wing. We went into this thinking about deep red, gold, and green—powerful colors of the period across the Middle East. After first trying red on the walls, we did a pivot to trying different (many different!) shades of green, drawing inspiration from a manuscript image Christy Gruber sent us. I’m sure Scott Meier will describe how many different small pots of paint he tried! Christy points out that the final shade used looks like cyprus, appropriate for the geographic emphasis of the gallery.

Other challenges included working out effective content for the introductory and in-gallery monitors (check out Eric’s gorgeous accompanying visuals!) and strategically situating the textiles case in a lower-light area.

In addition, scheduling such an installation is always a process of negotiation with the museum’s different departments to slot in work on this project amid everything else going on at the Kelsey. Scheduling also specifically comes into play for the textiles in particular, the conservation requirements around which are that they cannot be on display for more than four months. So that actually helped us decide on how frequently the BIG Object Spotlight installations will rotate: every fourth months for the next year or so, until we begin the construction phases of the permanent gallery project.

Emily: What are some challenges you foresee in the development of the permanent BIG?

Janet: Scheduling and conservation concerns, as with any exhibition. Cost is always a factor too—not only for expenses related to the installation but also for programming around the project and the gallery. We are fortunate to have the substantial support of LSA for the gallery itself but will be undertaking advancement activities for these related things. 

We’ll need to focus intensively in the coming year on nailing down the overall object list (taking into account conservation limits on display of organic objects) and developing the themes and narratives and look of the gallery.

Emily: What other artifacts or themes can we look forward to in subsequent Object Spotlights?

Janet: Each of these will be lead-curated by different people and poll different audiences for ideas about the kinds of objects to display. Next up is Christy Gruber, who is already advanced in her planning for Object Spotlight #2, which will open sometime in November!


As Janet pointed out, the creation of any exhibition—even one with a handful of artifacts like this one—takes a village. Next up is Scott Meier, the Kelsey Museum’s exhibition coordinator, who oversaw the development of the physical space in which the Object Spotlight resides. 

Emily: What is your role in the development of BIG and the first Object Spotlight?

Scott: I was responsible for the design and fabrication of the physical space of the gallery. One of the driving forces was to give the visitor a sense of what is still to come once the actual gallery is built. As we continue the Object Spotlight gallery, I would like to see it grow into more of an informational hub for the visitor to not only learn what is happening with BIG but also provide feedback for us about different design ideas.

Emily: Can you talk about the redesign of the Kelsey Museum’s second-floor galleries?  

Scott: We are at the very early stages of the redesign, but one of the things we would like to do is create a more open feeling to the galleries so that there is an interplay between them, both in content and visually. We want to convey the message that there was crossover in relationships and time periods.

We are also looking to use color a bit more than in other previous galleries to convey the various cultures. It is still early, but this may provide an opportunity to introduce totally new graphic branding for the permanent galleries.

Emily: What considerations did you keep in mind while prepping the space for the installation of BIG Object Spotlight #1? What challenges did you face?

Scott: The biggest consideration that had to be dealt with was lighting. The two textiles (see below) require low light—five footcandles—so to achieve this without making the gallery look underlit, I had to lower all the light that led up to or was around the textile cases so that the visitors’ eyes could adjust by the time they reach the textile cases.  

The biggest obstacle I faced was getting the correct color palette. Because color is going to play a vital role in the new gallery, I wanted to be sure what was represented was accurate as well as palatable to the visitor. What looks good as a small sample doesn’t always read well as a painted wall. It took about 18 samples painted on the wall and three complete gallery paintings until we were happy.  

Emily: What are some goals you have for the physical final product of the Byzantine and Islamic Gallery? How will it differ from, or be similar to, the Kelsey’s existing gallery spaces?

Scott: As I mentioned before, we hope to have more interconnected galleries in the future. In terms of design, it is still early, but due to earlier conversations the Exhibition Committee had, I think we are going to walk a fine line between having the gallery reflect the culture via color and graphics without crossing over into trying to be an overly immersive experience.  

I would like to make the actual case design and case layout very similar to what we already have so the transition is seamless. However, there are numerous opportunities to update the look to reflect the new gallery. One of these opportunities is addressing potential lighting issues with the artifacts. I am exploring drawers that have motion-sensor lighting that goes on when the drawer is pulled out. If we find this does work, I hope we can take this technology to our existing drawers that are difficult to view because of low light.  

I am also hoping we can introduce more interactive exhibits to the new Byzantine and Islamic Gallery with an eye toward adding interactive opportunities in the other permanent galleries.


Finally, I turned my questioning to Eric Campbell. As the Kelsey Museum’s graphic designer, Eric also played a major role in the visual final product of BIG Object Spotlight #1. 

Emily: Can you describe your role in the development of Object Spotlight #1 and BIG more generally?

Eric: I am responsible for designing the overall look of the gallery (along with Scott), as well as creating the panels, videos, signage, and miscellaneous collateral.

Emily: What are some challenges you faced while working on the BIG Object Spotlight #1 materials (if any)? Are there any challenges you foresee in the development of future Spotlight cases and, ultimately, the permanent Byzantine and Islamic Gallery?

Eric: Working on the BIG Object Spotlight was not particularly challenging, although the delicate nature of some of the objects—textiles specifically—make displaying them difficult. For future spotlights, and the permanent BIG, we will have to get creative with how we present these objects.

Emily: Do you have any goals for the visual final product of BIG?

Eric: In designing the visual look of the BIG, I hope to push past the subdued museum design that is commonplace. I want to incorporate colors, patterns, and textures from the Byzantine and Islamic world to bring drama to the gallery. 


If you have not had a chance to see the first Object Spotlight in person, there are still a few weeks yet left to visit before its deinstallation. And of course, the second Object Spotlight, curated by Christy Gruber, will be up before too long, allowing visitors to view a new thematic grouping of artifacts. 

Thank you to Janet, Scott, and Eric for taking the time to discuss BIG and Object Spotlight #1 in detail—we look forward to seeing more in the coming months and years!

 Assemblage of artifacts, including brightly colored textiles, coins, bracelets, amulets, bowls, and flasks.
Kelsey Museum artifacts relating to the Byzantine and Islamic worlds.

BIG Object Spotlight #1: Interviews with Kelsey Curators and Staff Read More »

“Pompeii in Color” exhibition now open

The exhibition Pompeii in Color: The Life of Roman Painting is now on view at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at NYU. Presenting thirty-five frescoes from the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, this exhibition invites visitors to experience the vibrant world of the ancient Roman home as the Pompeians themselves knew it.

Maritime landscape from room 52 of the Villa San Marco, Stabiae.

If you can’t make it to New York before the exhibition closes on May 29, never fear. An online portal gives access to a number of digital features, including a fly-through video of a 3D re-creation of a Pompeian home, a video commentary by an archaeologist who currently works at Pompeii, and other interactive features that bring the paintings to life in novel ways.

For more information and up-to-date visitor guidelines, including COVID-19 protocols, visit pompeiiincolor.com/visit-us.

“Pompeii in Color” exhibition now open Read More »

book cover

New Kelsey Museum publication hot off the press

book cover
The cover of the Kelsey’s latest publication, Graffiti as Devotion along the Nile and Beyond.

If you want a sneak peek into our upcoming exhibition Graffiti as Devotion along the Nile: El-Kurru, Sudan, which opens to the public on Friday, August 23, you can’t do better than to download the free PDF of the exhibition catalog and get reading.

Chapter one outlines the history of ancient Kush and provides some historical and archaeological context for the graffiti at El-Kurru. Then, seven richly illustrated essays by international scholars explore the phenomenon of graffiti in ancient and Christian-era Sudan, as well as an overview of Nubian rock art and a look at graffiti at Pompeii.

Some questions that are tackled in this book include:

  • What the heck, Meroitic pilgrims. Why are you eating the temple? (chapter 2)
  • Man, some people really love to carve pictures of boats. A whole lotta boats. (chapter 3)
  • Can’t we just rebury it all? Really, it’s for the best. (chapter 4)
  • Beneseg, it would have been great if in the graffito you left on the church wall in Banganarti you could have gone into a little more biographical detail and expanded on your personal ambitions and especially your trip to Nubia from France instead of just saying hi to the Archangel Rafael, thanks. (chapter 6)
  • Were “rock gong” concerts more like Chopin’s nocturnes or an Iggy Pop show? (chapter 7)
  • Graffito 1: Dude, did you see that gladiator match?! Graffito 2: OMG bro, that was off the chain!! (chapter 8)

While not exactly a fluffy summer beach read, Graffiti as Devotion is nonetheless written to engage non-specialist readers. And anyway, there are a lot of pictures. So go ahead! You’ve got nothing to lose! Download the PDF (did we mention that it’s free?) and have a look.

The book itself is a handsome paperback and will soon be available for purchase through our distributor, ISD. Better yet, come to the Kelsey and pick up a copy at our gift shop. While you’re here, stop in and take a stroll through the exhibition.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Graffiti as Devotion along the Nile and Beyond

Table of Contents

List of Contributors
Overview Map
Timeline of Kush and Nubia
List of Abbreviations
Foreword. “Graffiti in Ancient Kush and Medieval Nubia: An Introduction,” by Geoff Emberling and Suzanne Davis

  1. “A Cultural History of Kush: Politics, Economy, and Ritual Practice,” by Geoff Emberling
  2. “Graffiti at El-Kurru: The Funerary Temple,” by Suzanne Davis and Geoff Emberling
  3. “Boat Graffiti on the El-Kurru Pyramid,” by Bruce Beyer Williams
  4. “Conservation and Documentation of Graffiti at El-Kurru,” by Suzanne Davis
  5. “Figural Graffiti from the Meroitic Era on Philae Island,” by Jeremy Pope
  6. “Discourses with the Holy: Text and Image Graffiti from the Pilgrimage Churches of Saint Raphael the Archangel in Banganarti, Sudan,” by Bogdan Żurawski
  7. “An Overview of Nubian Rock Art in the Region of the 4th and 5th Cataracts,” by Fawzi Hassan Bakhiet
  8. “Graffiti at Pompeii, Italy,” by Rebecca Benefiel

Epilogue. “Hajj Paintings in El-Araba and El-Ghabat, Egypt: A Photo Essay,” by Ayman Damarany
Catalog of Selected Graffiti from El-Kurru, by Suzanne Davis, Geoff Emberling, and Bruce Beyer Williams

New Kelsey Museum publication hot off the press Read More »

Join the Conversation about the Special Exhibition, Urban Biographies!

UB_key-image_1.0_landscape_5.20.18-web

On August 24 the Kelsey Museum’s latest special exhibition, Urban Biographies, Ancient and Modern, opened to the public. It will be on display until January 8, 2019. An online version of the exhibition will remain available on the Kelsey website even after the museum show closes. 

The exhibition features Kelsey-sponsored archaeological research at Gabii in Italy, Olynthos in Greece, and Notion in Turkey and compares these ancient cities with modern Detroit. Comments on both the exhibition and the website are very welcome.

What does the concept of an “urban biography” mean to you? What do you think we can learn by comparing past and present? What are some of the details of the biography of your hometown, or of another city you know well? Please leave a comment in the “Leave a Reply” box at the bottom of this page.

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Ugly Object of the Month — October 2016

BY CAROLINE ROBERTS, Conservator

It’s October, folks, and that means the season of decorative gourds and dressing up in festive costumes is upon us. This is partly why I chose this ceramic figurine of Harpocrates as October’s Ugly Object.

image_01-oct
Ceramic Harpocrates figurine, with intact ground and paint layers. 2nd–3rd century AD. KM 6449.

Who, you might ask, is Harpocrates? He was a deity worshipped in Ptolemaic Egypt, a child version of the sun god Horus. This ceramic figurine bears many of Harpocrates’ signature traits, such as a finger raised to his mouth, the double crown and crescent moon, and a garland. This figurine is also probably one of many identical ceramics produced for mass consumption.  But what’s really cool, to me, is what’s going on the surface: this Harpocrates is seriously decked out in a variety of well-preserved paint colors, which include black, pink, red, yellow, and blue. Equally cool is the likelihood that other ceramics like this one, many of which retain no polychromy at all, were just as colorful.

While documenting the figurine I thought it might be worth doing some technical imaging of the pigments, to get a preliminary idea of what they could be. The longwave ultraviolet luminescence (UVL) image revealed that the pink garland is likely made of rose madder pigment, and the visible-induced infrared luminescence (VIL) image showed traces of Egyptian blue pigment on the structure next to Harpocrates, as well as on his crown. The remaining colors are likely iron-based earth pigments, and the black carbon-based. Other techniques that could help us confirm these results include XRF or FTIR spectroscopies, the first of which (like imaging) is non-invasive.

image_02-oct

Left: UVL image showing orange autofluorescence of madder in the garland. Right: VIL image showing luminescent Egyptian blue stripes to the right of the figure, as well as in the crown.

This highly colorful Harpocrates will be on display at the Kelsey starting February 10, 2017, as part of the upcoming special exhibition The Art of Science and Healing: From Antiquity to the Renaissance, curated by Pablo Alvarez.

Ugly Object of the Month — October 2016 Read More »

An open letter to ancient people

SUZANNE DAVIS, Curator of Conservation

Dear Ancient People,

I am writing this letter in response to my recent work on your textiles for the upcoming Kelsey Museum exhibit Less Than Perfect. I am writing this letter because I love you. I do. Please believe that. Your textiles are lovely. Super beautiful. But they are also frankly just crooked as heck, and they are a huge pain to exhibit because they absolutely will not hang straight. Seriously, folks, could you not sew a straight seam? Did you even try?

You guys built canals and aqueducts and enormous buildings. You kept time with complicated water clocks and annual calendars. You dyed fibers using complex chemistry and spent hours doing meticulous embroidery. But you couldn’t sew straight? Am I really supposed to believe that? Really???

I have just spent many hours of my life trying to accommodate your wackadoodle craftsmanship and show it to best advantage. This was not fun or easy. What’s past is past. I get that. There are no do-overs. But friends, if this is your A Game, it needs work. I’m just saying. When you were like, “Whatever! That’s good enough! I mean, who cares if this is perfect? Who’ll notice?” That would be me, y’all. I noticed, and I do not thank you.

Sincerely yours,

Suzanne

 

August Cons Post Photo
Exhibit preparator Scott Meier comments on my attempt to make this textile hang level. It is longer on one side than the other and has wonky seams. So yeah: It’s less than perfect.

An open letter to ancient people Read More »

From the Archives — May 2016

BY SEBASTIÁN ENCINA, Museum Collections Manager, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

In a little less than a month, the Kelsey’s latest exhibition, Leisure & Luxury in the Age of Nero: the Villas of Oplontis Near Pompeii, will, sadly, come down for good. This was the Kelsey’s most grandiose exhibition to date, the culmination of several year’s work and planning. For this exhibit, the Museum borrowed just over 230 artifacts from the ancient villas at Oplontis, many of them out of Italy for the first time ever, only a few ever even exhibited previously. This endeavor was a major undertaking by the Kelsey, spearheaded by curator Elaine Gazda, with the assistance of many staff. Reactions have been overwhelmingly positive and reassuring that our efforts were well worth it.

The exhibition showcases beautiful artwork from Roman times when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79. These were covered in ash for nearly two millennia, awaiting discovery but perfectly preserving spectacular sculptures, frescoes, jewelry, and daily household objects. With this exhibition, Professor Gazda shows the contents from two villas, and what life was like at the time. Come mid-May, the exhibition will begin its journey to two different museums in the US, and with that these beautiful objects will be gone.

But friends of the Kelsey are well aware that once Oplontis leaves the Kelsey, we will still have beautiful artwork from Pompeii on display. The Barosso watercolors, the 1926 replicas of a room at the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii, are still visible in the Upjohn Exhibit Hall, in their own special room. These watercolors will be with us past the current exhibition, allowing visitors to gaze upon the level of craftsmanship not only of Maria Barosso, but of the original Roman artists as well. This space is a highlight of the collections, a must see for any visit to the Kelsey.

What some of our newer friends will not know is that the watercolors were not always on display in such a space. In fact, the artwork was rolled up and put away in storage for the majority of its life. In 1926, Maria Barosso painted these at the behest of Franics Kelsey. They were soon put on display in Italy under the auspices of Benito Mussolini, then rolled and shipped to Michigan, where they lay dormant for over 70 years. Throughout its history, before the construction of the Upjohn Exhibit Hall and its opening in 2009, the Kelsey simply did not have the space to properly display these paintings. They were too large to display in the spaces of Newberry, and the building did not have the proper climate control and lighting to safely exhibit them. Instead, they were kept in a locked cabinet in collections storage where they teased potential use in an unknown future.

This month’s “From the Archives” reminds some of our longtime friends, and brings to light for our newer friends, an endeavor to have these out for view. In 2000, Professor Gazda curated the exhibition The Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii: Ancient Ritual, Modern Muse. This was the Kelsey’s first successful attempt at having the watercolors out and visible, not just locked where no one could see them. However, even then the Kelsey was not able to show all the panels as they should be viewed. The temporary exhibition space, where the current gift shop is now located, was simply not large enough for all the panels. In order to do this, the Kelsey had to partner with the Museum of Art. This exhibition was a multi-venue show, with part on view at the Kelsey, including some complementary artifacts and the full-size mirror group panel, and the complete room on view at the Museum of Art.

The Kelsey archives do not only contain the history of the archaeological excavations and forays into Europe by Kelsey and Swain and friends, but we also maintain the history of the Museum into modern times. Every exhibition we have put on is carefully recorded, making it possible for us to learn from our past, see what we have done, how it was done. It is humbling to see where the Kelsey was just 16 years ago, and the limits we had to face. Despite these limitations, however, the staff and curators were able to overcome and do the best we could with the resources we had. Back then, we had no idea a space such as Upjohn would be coming to us, we could only hope.

The files in the exhibition archives contain old posters, flyers, photos, even layout designs. These are a few of the examples we present this month. And it acts as a reminder that even though Oplontis will soon be going away, we still have the beautiful Barosso watercolors to enjoy for many years to come.

From the Archives — May 2016 Read More »

Ugly Object of the Month — April 2016

BY SUZANNE DAVIS, Curator for Conservation, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

The Kelsey Museum’s current special exhibit Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero is full of insanely gorgeous objects from the villas of Oplontis near Pompeii. But guess what? The Kelsey has a few objects on view in this exhibit, too, and you probably won’t be surprised to learn that some of them are, you know, not insanely gorgeous.

29617
Polished fragment of architectural facing. KM 29617.

This month’s Ugly Object is a marble sample — basically, a polished rock — and it’s on view in a section of the exhibit that demonstrates how the villas’ surfaces were adorned with decorative stones. You see the object here before conservation treatment to remove the collector’s label. The label — which we saved, of course — says: “From the Great Theater at Ephesus, Sept 6th 1867.”

It was collected and given to the Kelsey by James D. Candler, a businessman, builder, and traveler who was based in Detroit in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This stone sample and others like it have been the focus of recent research at the Kelsey. IPCAA alumnae Leah Long and Lynley McAlpine, U-M professor and Kelsey curator Elaine Gazda, and University of Akron emeritus professor Clayton Fant have been studying the Kelsey’s stone samples, in part to see if analytical techniques like stable isotope analysis can connect samples like this one to their sources and buildings of origin.

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Installing Oplontis

BY CAROLINE ROBERTS, Conservator, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

For the past four weeks it has been all hands on deck at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Indeed, it has taken the entire Kelsey village – curators, registrars, conservators, educators, and exhibit coordinators – to bring Oplontis to life.

The first step in installing Oplontis was to receive the objects. Over 30 crates of artifacts arrived from Italy nearly five weeks ago. Kelsey collections managers were at the Museum (very) early in the morning to oversee the movement of the crates from truck to loading dock to gallery. The crates were allowed to adjust to the climate of the Kelsey galleries for about a day before being opened.

Oplontis 3
The Nike sculpture travels from the first to the second floor galleries

 

Our next step was to unpack and install the artifacts. We did this with the help of two couriers, Giuseppe Zolfo, Head of Conservation at Herculaneum, and Stefania Giudice, Conservator at Pompeii. Giuseppe and Stefania checked the condition of artifacts as they were unpacked and helped install them in cases, on stands, and on top of columns. Both Giuseppe and Stefania have traveled to numerous museums around the world to assist with the installation of artifacts from the Pompeii area, and we’re grateful for their help in installing the Oplontis artifacts and sculpture.

Oplontis 1
Stefania Giudice examines a wall painting fragment

 

The wall painting fragments that appear suspended on the gallery walls took many days to install, their positions needing to align with their reconstructed backgrounds. The coins and jewelry in the Villa B area were expertly mounted by Stefania and Giuseppe using covered pins and shaped metal rods. You may wonder how we moved the massive strong box onto its base. The box is too fragile to lift manually, but it is set on wheels, which allowed us to roll it from its crate onto the base with the help of a wooden block. We installed the large sculptures with the help of a company specializing in the movement and installation of works of art.

Oplontis 2
Giuseppe and Scott install wall painting fragments

 

Our final steps will be to install the lighting and text before the exhibition opens. This is by far the largest installation I have been a part of, and it has been a fantastic learning opportunity. Among other things, I feel much more adept at using a drill.

Installing Oplontis Read More »

Keeping our heads on straight: custom mount design for Oplontis garden sculpture

BY CAROLINE ROBERTS, Conservator, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

Over two hundred artifacts and sculptures are traveling from Italy to Ann Arbor for the upcoming exhibition Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero, opening in February. Among them are three marble heads that once stood in the north garden of Villa A at Oplontis. The heads will be displayed in the Kelsey’s temporary exhibition space as they once were in the garden: atop tall, narrow plinths. Sculpture like this might normally be held in place with a metal pin inserted into a hole in the base of the neck. These heads, however, lack such an accommodation, which meant that exhibition coordinator Scott Meier and I needed to come up with another way to secure the heads to their exhibit mounts.

Scott’s idea is to create a two-part mount custom fit to each head’s neck base. The mount will essentially serve as a clamp, immobilizing the head and preventing it from tipping off the plinth if it is accidentally bumped. In order to create such a mount we needed a cast of each sculpture’s neck. Scott and I were able to do this in person in June 2015, when we traveled to Oplontis with curator Elaine Gazda. First, I covered the ancient marble surface with a temporary layer of Parafilm® M, a stretchable plastic film, in order to protect the stone from any staining that might be caused by the mold-taking material.

Image_01
Carrie applies protective Parafilm® M to the base of each neck.

For the mold-taking material we used silicone rubber putty, which Scott applied in a thick layer to the surface.

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Scott creates a mold of the neck using silicone rubber.

The putty cured overnight, leaving us with three hollow, rubber neck molds — which we dubbed the “blue brains” because, well … that’s what they look like.

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Carrie and Scott pour plaster of Paris into the molds.

These “brains” eventually served as receptacles for plaster, which we used to create duplicates of the neck bases.

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Plaster duplicate of one of the three neck bases.

The duplicates are being used to cast the two-part mounts in epoxy resin. Once it’s cured, the epoxy will fit perfectly around the bases of the necks and hold the heads in place with the help of metal brackets. You won’t be able to see the custom-fit mounts when the heads are on display, but you will be able to appreciate the many steps that took place in order to recreate the sculptures’ original plinth presentation. See the marble heads and more in Leisure and Luxury next month at the Kelsey!

Keeping our heads on straight: custom mount design for Oplontis garden sculpture Read More »

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