The new Carnegie Museum of Natural History exhibit “The Stories We Keep: Conserving Objects From Ancient Egypt” is a show that stands on its own, with more than 80 artifacts on display plus interactive stations and a chance to see how real conservators clean and care for fragile artifacts.
But it also represents a transition. The museum’s long-running Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt closed for good last fall, and “Stories We Keep,” which opens Sat., March 9, is meant to show visitors what the Carnegie is doing to prepare for a new permanent exhibit.
And if “Stories We Keep” is any indication, patrons should expect future exhibits to display millennia-old artifacts with a lot more context and effort to create connections to contemporary audiences.
“The goal is just to get people to think about the things in your everyday life that have meaning to you,” said Sarah Crawford, the museum’s director of exhibitions and design.
The year-long exhibit inhabits the roomy R.P. Simmons Family Gallery. Crawford noted a display case where curators juxtaposed ancient Egyptian objects with their modern equivalents. A child’s beaded bracelet, for instance, hangs next to a newborn’s plastic hospital bracelet of much more recent vintage. (It belonged to Crawford’s own daughter.) An ancient jar of kohl and applicator are displayed next to a modern eye-makeup case. And a ceramic beer mug rests alongside a drinking glass.
“We don’t know who owned this beer mug, but that doesn’t mean that it was any less valuable to that individual,” Crawford said.
All the objects and artifacts on display – a fraction of the 650 Egyptian objects in the museum’s collection -- were also in the old Walton Hall, which opened in 1990 and was not ADA-compliant, said Lisa Haney, a museum assistant curator and Egyptologist. Most will end up in “Egypt on the Nile,” the planned permanent exhibit, including ceramic urns and limestone stela – tablets carved with hieroglyphics.
Two familiar figures from the old exhibit, however, are taking their bow in Pittsburgh. The life-sized mannequins representing bead-making artisans occupy a pedestal with a display about the pigment known as Egyptian blue, but Haney said they'll more likely end up at another museum rather than make it into “Egypt on the Nile.”
One thing visitors won’t find in “Stories We Tell” are any human remains. Last year, the museum adopted a new policy forbidding the display of human remains or associated grave goods. The skull and bones of one individual that had long occupied a display on ancient Egyptian burials was removed. The removal was part of a larger effort to repatriate such remains when possible.
Haney said “Stories We Keep” was designed with help from community volunteers from groups including St. Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church, in Ambridge, which has a heavily Egyptian congregation; Three Rivers Waterkeepers; Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy; and the University of Pittsburgh’s Arabic Language and Club and Middle Eastern and North African Student Association.
“Stories We Keep” also includes several new interactive displays. One consists of a series of microscopes that let patrons ponder some of the small-scale details conservators consider when they’re studying ancient materials. Another shows how conservators use black light in their work. A third is a 3D-scanned replica of a cracked, table-lamp-sized Egyptian vase that visitors can disassemble then puzzle back together themselves.
Another display depicts how conservators brightened a 3,500-year-old limestone stela, cleaning it of dust and soot. (Secret ingredient: saliva.)
One highlight of “Stories We Keep” is surely the Visible Conservation Lab. A large section of the gallery is framed by transparent walls so visitors can watch conservators like Mostafa Sherif, an expert on ancient wood restoration, at work on objects including the museum’s 4,000-year-old Dahshur funerary boat, one of just four still in existence. Conservators will also hold daily demonstrations and answer visitor questions at selected times.
“People have an attachment to the Egypt gallery and these objects in Pittsburgh,” said Crawford. “And so the conservation lab allows people to be a bit nebby and see what we’re doing and come along on the journey with us.”
The boat, made of prized Lebanese cedar, was used to transport royal corpses, funerary goods or mourners to burial sites. Uncovered by archaeologists in the mid-1890s, it was purchased by museum founder Andrew Carnegie himself in 1901. Except for the 1980s, it has been on display since about 1905 – nearly 120 years, or about 3% of its total lifespan.
Haney, the Egyptologist, said overall the 30-foot-long boat is “in really good shape.” It mostly just needs cleaning from its decades of display.
Accompanying signage illuminates another mystery: In 1958, museum records indicate, the wooden boat was coated stem to stern with something called Wife’s Pride. Apparently it was an off-the-shelf wood preservative, meant to make it safe for visitors to touch the boat, which they were permitted to do for decades.
“I guess at the time they thought it was really great!” said Haney.
But conservators today have no idea what Wife’s Pride was; it’s no longer on the market. But neither are its traces removable from the 4,000-year-old cedar.
“It really goes to show though how far conservation practices have come since that period of time,” said Haney.
