In my four years at Cal I only went in the museum once. Only once!! Even worse is that it was an assignment for a class. I am the most pathetic Anthropology major ever for never going in again. Worst of all, I'm pursuing a career in Museum Studies, and did not take advantage of the one museum so wholly available to me.
Until now.
That's right: instead of working this afternoon--although I would somewhat consider it part of getting career experience--I went to the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Click the link for their website. I went in partly as a personal assignment, and partly because I need to review two exhibits for one of my graduate school applications. I cannot begin to explain to you the variety of objects that are in the museum. There are seven definite sections although the museum space is minute compared to other museums in the area. A list of the current exhibits follow: "99 Bottles of Beer - Global Brewing Traditions", "From the Maker's Hand" - Africa (mostly central/equatorial), Ancient North America, Ancient Mediterranean, Ancient Peru, Native California, and last but certainly the most, Ancient Egypt.
Each section had its own story to tell, and I found myself looking harder and harder at each object as I walked slowly by them. The first, "99 Bottles of Beer", was probably one of the more interesting. It showed the material traditions of 5 (or 6 depending on how you read it) different parts of the world for drinking and making beer. If you are interested in beer and you are also interested in archaeology, you MUST see this exhibit. It'll take you no more than 15 minutes to see it between classes (or when you visit Berkeley), and it's very informative. Unfortunately I never got the chance to count the bottles to see if there were 99 of them, but one of you should count them and post it in a comment! Or I might go check it out later....
Next, there was a blurb entitled "From the Maker's Hand", pointing out that the museum's collection is different because it's an Anthropology museum, not an art museum. The things on display were not just for visual pleasure but for functional, religious, and cultural reasons. What a lot of people don't realize about archaeological artifacts is that they are 1) not always dug out of the ground, and 2) not always pretty to be "art". The word "artifact" simply means something that was created or modified by human hands. So, a pencil that you use in class everyday, although neither ancient nor buried, is an artifacts. Also, calling something "art" is controversial. A thing can be considered "pretty" for a number or reasons; but the definition of whether or not it is "art" is debatable. (I apologize for a lack of texts to cite for this information, but I know that everything I say here I more or less learned from the Dept. of Anthropology at UC Berkeley).
As mentioned before, there were a number of different permanent exhibits for the museum, more or less based on geography. These were further towards the back, so if a visitor were looking for the latest installment, they need not look further than the entrance. "Ancient North America" included ceramics and beads from multiple cultures. "Ancient Mediterranean" had an assortment of Sicilian and Greek artifacts collected by Phoebe Hearst herself. Lastly, there was a section of "Ancient Peru", no doubt advocated by Prof. Christine Hastorf, the Peru specialist who teaches a class on her work at Berkeley. There was also an exhibit on Africa, most of the artifacts being recently created (including a mask made with used shotgun rounds as a beard). Each of these sections showed a variety of materials and represented many centuries. Although the lighting was a little spotty (possibly to preserve the paint on some of the pieces), it was easy to see that the museum put a lot of thought into each display.
If you enter and immediately turn left, there is a section dedicated to Native California, mainly focusing on the man Ishi, "the Last Wild Indian" as he was called. Decorating the cases were objects for every use, including a section holding some of Ishi's own things. One side even had a log canoe, usually typical of the Southern California tribes. I challenge you to admire the handy work of Ishi's craftmanship. He made many projectile points out of bottle glass that are almost like sculptures in themselves.
All of these things are great, and can be seen almost every day of the year. However, the most prominent installment at the museum (and not permanent!), had to be the the Egypt exhibit. Starting in a display case contiguous to the Ancient Peru case, there were a number of specialized sections to the exhibit. The least specific included various individual artifacts: figurines, combs, etc. Moving past these, the viewer then came across the different sections of a single sarcophagus, and the mummy that it had once enclosed.
The museum had done a sensitive gesture by hanging banners from the ceiling around the mummy, asking those that entered to be respectful toward the person within. They had a short bio on the woman, and invited the viewer to speak her name. This action allows the viewer to consider this mummy as a true person, who, although existed a long time ago, still deserves the consideration of those now living.
When I came to this point, I spoke the name, walked in, and sat on one of the stools that were available. I felt a sense of sadness for the girl who once had been a noblewoman of Egypt. To be displayed in a museum seems humiliating. However, the Phoebe Hearst Museum is better than most. In Italy, they had mummies plainly on display, obviously decomposing in their cases with children running wild around the different rooms. I have a deep respect for the museum now in how they handled the human remains--a tidbit that the public usually expects of an Egypt exhibit.
A couple of other things to note: The realistic portraits painted during the Roman days in Egypt. Being Sicilian myself, I couldn't help but wonder if any of these people could possibly be my ancestors. Everyone knows that if you're Sicilian, your ancestry could be rooted anywhere from Spanish to Persian. These portrains looked like cousins to me. There was also a kids area at the very end of the exhibit where they could read books, play puzzle games, and just plain entertain themselves while their parents viewed the other objects. Finally, there was a person sitting at a desk working on objects in the middle of the exhibit for visitors to ask questions. Altogether, the exhibit was thorough for so small a space, and I spent close to an hour checking out the museum as a whole.
I highly recommend the Anthropology Museum to anyone who works at, lives in, or has never been to Berkeley. I took it for granted when I was a student, and now I cherish it more than ever. Best of all: it's free!
As mentioned before, there were a number of different permanent exhibits for the museum, more or less based on geography. These were further towards the back, so if a visitor were looking for the latest installment, they need not look further than the entrance. "Ancient North America" included ceramics and beads from multiple cultures. "Ancient Mediterranean" had an assortment of Sicilian and Greek artifacts collected by Phoebe Hearst herself. Lastly, there was a section of "Ancient Peru", no doubt advocated by Prof. Christine Hastorf, the Peru specialist who teaches a class on her work at Berkeley. There was also an exhibit on Africa, most of the artifacts being recently created (including a mask made with used shotgun rounds as a beard). Each of these sections showed a variety of materials and represented many centuries. Although the lighting was a little spotty (possibly to preserve the paint on some of the pieces), it was easy to see that the museum put a lot of thought into each display.
If you enter and immediately turn left, there is a section dedicated to Native California, mainly focusing on the man Ishi, "the Last Wild Indian" as he was called. Decorating the cases were objects for every use, including a section holding some of Ishi's own things. One side even had a log canoe, usually typical of the Southern California tribes. I challenge you to admire the handy work of Ishi's craftmanship. He made many projectile points out of bottle glass that are almost like sculptures in themselves.
All of these things are great, and can be seen almost every day of the year. However, the most prominent installment at the museum (and not permanent!), had to be the the Egypt exhibit. Starting in a display case contiguous to the Ancient Peru case, there were a number of specialized sections to the exhibit. The least specific included various individual artifacts: figurines, combs, etc. Moving past these, the viewer then came across the different sections of a single sarcophagus, and the mummy that it had once enclosed.
The museum had done a sensitive gesture by hanging banners from the ceiling around the mummy, asking those that entered to be respectful toward the person within. They had a short bio on the woman, and invited the viewer to speak her name. This action allows the viewer to consider this mummy as a true person, who, although existed a long time ago, still deserves the consideration of those now living.
When I came to this point, I spoke the name, walked in, and sat on one of the stools that were available. I felt a sense of sadness for the girl who once had been a noblewoman of Egypt. To be displayed in a museum seems humiliating. However, the Phoebe Hearst Museum is better than most. In Italy, they had mummies plainly on display, obviously decomposing in their cases with children running wild around the different rooms. I have a deep respect for the museum now in how they handled the human remains--a tidbit that the public usually expects of an Egypt exhibit.
A couple of other things to note: The realistic portraits painted during the Roman days in Egypt. Being Sicilian myself, I couldn't help but wonder if any of these people could possibly be my ancestors. Everyone knows that if you're Sicilian, your ancestry could be rooted anywhere from Spanish to Persian. These portrains looked like cousins to me. There was also a kids area at the very end of the exhibit where they could read books, play puzzle games, and just plain entertain themselves while their parents viewed the other objects. Finally, there was a person sitting at a desk working on objects in the middle of the exhibit for visitors to ask questions. Altogether, the exhibit was thorough for so small a space, and I spent close to an hour checking out the museum as a whole.
I highly recommend the Anthropology Museum to anyone who works at, lives in, or has never been to Berkeley. I took it for granted when I was a student, and now I cherish it more than ever. Best of all: it's free!
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