On this past March 27th, the first day of Van Gogh and Britain, people started lining up at the entrance of Tate Britain well before the opening time and I was among those eagerly waiting to enter. Although it was something of a last-minute decision, I opted to make this journey to London over our spring break. I was ready to visit a variety of museums there, but the Tate was definitely the most exciting stop for me.

I have visited the Penn Museum on a number of occasions: as a student growing up just outside of Philadelphia, as a professional museum educator, and as a patron who enjoys archeological artifacts. With these connections, it is not surprising that a new temporary exhibition of the Egypt collection would interest me. Mummies draw a crowd, so when the Penn Museum began to reinterpret and reinstall the Egyptian collection, the Museum used the opportunity to present a temporary and smaller installation focusing on different aspects of museum work specific to their material.

Being an Assyriologist also studying the public humanities feels a little like tipping after a meal at a restaurant. Folks are consistently patting me on the back for doing so, but shouldn’t we all be doing it anyway? 

Like most fundraisers I know, I’ve often thought wistfully of how wonderful it must be to be on the “other side” – to be a grant maker instead of a grant seeker. “It must be so great”, my colleagues and I might fantasize, “to give it away instead of always asking”.

The Library of Congress’ online collection contains a group of enchanting photographs, meticulously posed and arranged: snapshots of women in extraordinary feather hats, men in suits and ties, and studious pupils pretending to measure liquids in laboratories. They are part of the African American Photographs Assembled for 1900 Paris Exposition.