For more than 4,000 years, the Eastern Mediterranean region has been a nexus of diverse civilizations. Priests, merchants, armies, and immigrants created a cosmopolitan culture with global significance that continues to this day.
Telling a Different Story
The reimagined Eastern Mediterranean Gallery at the Penn Museum wants to change the way we think about a complex, cosmopolitan region
Published: November 18, 2022
In recent years, the region—which encompasses Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian Territories, and Cyprus—has often been defined by disputes stemming from its complex geopolitical position and religious differences. Through the reimagined Eastern Mediterranean gallery, made possible by lead donors The Giorgi Family Foundation, the Penn Museum is telling a different story—one that asserts its significance to the growth of civilizations around the world.
The Giorgi Family Foundation Gallery at the Penn Museum highlights the ancient intersections of culture that characterize the Eastern Mediterranean Gallery.
“One of the main goals of this exhibit is to get people to rethink what they know about this place,” says Lauren Ristvet, Lauren Ristvet, lead curator of The Giorgi Family Foundation Gallery and Dyson Associate Professor of Anthropology at Penn Arts & Sciences. “Often, the story of this region is narrated through either the Israel-Palestine conflict and or through the Syrian civil war. We hope to emphasize that this is not only a place of conflict, but very much a place of people living together, of coexistence.”
Featuring 400+ artifacts from the Middle Bronze Age (2000 – 1600 BCE) through the Ottoman Period in the 1800s, the interactive gallery is organized into three themes—Coexistence and Connection, Power and Conflict, and Creativity and Change. These themes aim to suggest a much richer identity beyond the prevailing narrative of a region marked by conflict.
“The Eastern Mediterranean is the birth site for three major religions and the alphabet,” says Virginia Herrmann, another co-curator for the Eastern Mediterranean gallery. “These innovations did not emerge in a vacuum. They are a product of the intense cultural and political exchange that this region is really marked by.”
The region’s reliance on trading at sea in antiquity is on prominent display in the new gallery, represented in part by artifacts discovered in underwater excavations.
Penn has a long history of fieldwork in the region. The vast majority of objects on display, such as these sarcophagus fragments from the site of Beth Shean in present-day Israel, were excavated by Penn Museum archaeologists.
Cultures throughout the region influenced each other significantly, but their artifacts reflect their individual needs, resources, and technologies.
The gallery offers an immersive array of options to create a multisensory experience. A full-sized model of a cargo hold based on a Bronze Age shipwreck will be a feast for the eyes. Visitors will be able to touch ancient writing materials, including cuneiform and parchment, and use touchscreens to delve into the stories behind the artifacts and their contribution to the development of modern culture. And an interactive smell exhibit will replicate the incense used in religious rituals in the region.
In addition to its namesake, the renovation of The Giorgi Family Foundation Gallery was made possible by support from the McLean Contributionship; Jay, W’70, PAR’00, PAR’04, and Gretchen Riley, CGS’70, PAR’00, PAR’04; and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The effort contributes to an ambitious reimagination of the Penn Museum, which, upon conclusion, will transform more than 44,000 square feet of public spaces and signature galleries, including modernization and enhanced accessibility for all visitors.
“Our Museum’s transformation is about much more than physical space,” says Christopher Woods, Williams Director of the Penn Museum. “It’s about creating a visitor experience that is immersive and immediate, showing our audiences that the issues of the past are still very much relevant to the concerns of today’s world.”
The gallery will tell the story of the connectivity of ideas and peoples in different ways to create new things.”Lauren Ristvet, Lauren Ristvet, lead curator of The Giorgi Family Foundation Gallery and Dyson Associate Professor of Anthropology at Penn Arts & Sciences
The public opening of The Giorgi Family Foundation Gallery will take place on November 19-20, featuring activities inspired by the diverse cultures of the region including crafts, live music, and dance and drum workshops.
“This gallery gives you a sense of a world widening in scope, giving rise to new technologies and belief systems: a dynamic, interconnected world,” says Woods. “There can be no better example of the relevance of the past to present, the enormous potential for human innovation in a multicultural world, and how the lessons of the past speak powerfully to us today.”
