New exhibition at Carnegie Museum of Natural History lifts the curtain on artifact conservation
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- If you are interested in ancient Egypt, you may want to check out the new exhibit that's in Pittsburgh.
Sarah Crawford, the director of exhibitions and design at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, says that this new exhibit lifts the veil of mystery on both ancient objects and how the museum preserves them.
"'The Stories We Keep: Conserving Objects from Ancient Egypt,' is a new exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History," said Crawford. "It' sreally focused on how we care for objects at the museum -- why we care for them, why we have them in our collection, and it is an opportunity for visitors to see behind the scenes."
This new exhibit allows you to put yourself in the shoes of an Egyptologist and do things like piece together parts of broken pottery, get hands on with seeing objects under microscopes and you can even talk to the professional staff of conservators as they work to catalog and preserve artifacts right in front of you.
"I think the most exciting thing about this exhibition is the visible conservation lab," Crawford said. "Any time of the day that visitors show up, they can see conservators working on the objects. One day you may come in and it may be a plank from a 4,000-year-old boat, the next day it might be a tiny statue from ancient Egypt. So I think one of the things that is great is that people can see the exhibition change, they can see the different work over time."
"The Stories We Keep" also features several modern-day objects and their ancient counterparts.
"The idea is, we are asking visitors to think about what stories your objects tell," said Crawford. "We have a child's bracelet from thousands of years ago, next to a modern one. So, what we are really thinking about is what people leave behind. What these objects tell us about these ancient cultures and who these people were."
"The Stories We Keep: Conserving Objects from Ancient Egypt" runs through next March at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and is free to visitors with Museum admission.
