Museums: A Peek Behind the Scenes 2019

A beautiful spring day for our visit to this amazing plant museum. There are all kinds of collectors out there. Pierre du Pont collected plants and trees. Today we learned a little something about a garden that is bigger than Harry’s home town of Wenonah. We toured the gigantic conservatory, a welcome tropical respite...

After three days on the road, we spent today applying what we’ve learned about museums. Curators need to know a lot about the subject of their exhibits, so we chose one we know well: ourselves. Each of us chose several artifacts that tell our personal stories. Working in our travel pods, we sorted through...

Today’s adventure took us to the Penn Museum. A museum archaeologist, Sarah Linn met us in one of the classrooms used by UPenn students, who study anthropology and archaeology right in the museum. She introduced us to the study of archaeology, and we talked a bit about how the work of archaeological conservators differs...

We spent today at the American Philosophical Society Museum. The APS was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743. The Library has been collecting books and manuscripts since then, with a focus on science. We spent much of the morning talking with museum professionals about the work they do, and then we walked over to...

We began our exploration of museums with a rainy, windy trip to the Philadelphia Zoo. Our docents explained many of the things that go on behind the scenes at this living museum. Our group walked around together and looked at the exhibits. The first thing we saw today was the monkey exhibit. After this,...

Welcome to Intensive Learning 2019: Museums: A Peek Behind the Scenes. This year, we’ll study what museums are and how they work, and we’ll get some insight into what people who work in museums do. Here’s our itinerary: Friday, March 22: Philadelphia ZooMonday, March 25: American Philosophical Society MuseumTuesday, March 26: Penn MuseumWednesday, March...