Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology is an archaeology museum located on the central campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. A unit of the university's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, it holds more than 100,000 ancient and medieval artifacts from Mediterranean and Near Eastern civilizations. The museum matters not only for its substantial collection but also for its integration of research, fieldwork, and education, housing the University of Michigan Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology and continuing to sponsor excavations that are woven into the curriculum for archaeology students.

The museum's origins predate its formal establishment. Francis W. Kelsey, professor of Latin at the University of Michigan from 1889 until his death in 1927, began acquiring artifacts museology in 1893 to help students comprehend the ancient world. That year he purchased 108 lamps, vases, and building materials from Alfred Louis Delattre, the Jesuit priest excavating at Carthage, Tunisia, and acquired another 1,096 objects from dealers in Tunis, Rome, Capri, and Sicily. Combined with several thousand coins donated to the university in the 1880s, these formed the core of the archaeological collections. Kelsey continued acquiring until his death, amassing pottery, terracotta figurines, painted stucco, inscribed tombstones, daily life objects, glass, tombs, and papyri. In 1924 he secured funding for excavations around the Mediterranean, shipping nearly 45,000 objects from Karanis, Egypt, which illustrated daily life under Roman rule, and another 13,000 from Seleucia-on-the-Tigris in Iraq. The collection opened to the public in Newberry Hall in 1929, and the museum was officially named for Kelsey in 1953. By the early 1990s overcrowding and inadequate storage forced closure in July 1993; the museum reopened in October 1994 after a $1.3 million renovation that added a third floor, climate-controlled Sensitive Artifact Facility and Environment, conservation lab, and improved accessibility, funded by the University of Michigan, National Endowment for the Humanities, Kelsey Museum Associates, and a $250,000 gift from Eugene M. and Emily Grant. In 2003 Edwin and Mary Meader gave $8 million, the largest gift in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts history at that time, to expand the museum. The William E. Upjohn Exhibit Wing, designed by Hammond Beeby Rupert Ainge Inc., was completed in 2009, adding over 20,000 square feet of climate-controlled study, storage, and display space; the museum reopened in November 2009. Fieldwork continued through approximately 1965 as a primary source of acquisitions, after which changing practices, including the 1970 UNESCO Convention, shifted emphasis toward photographic documentation while excavations continued with finds remaining in their countries of origin.

The collection spans from prehistory through the medieval period, with particular strength in ancient Greek and Roman cultures and in pre-dynastic and Greco-Roman Egypt. Approximately two-thirds of the artifacts derive from the museum's own excavations, while one-third entered through purchase and donation. The holdings include pottery, utilitarian objects, terracotta figurines, Egyptian tombstones, and Greek papyri. Before the 2009 expansion, less than one percent of the collection could be displayed; the Upjohn Wing dramatically increased public access to these materials. The museum also maintains extensive photographic documentation as part of its contemporary collecting focus.

Among the most significant holdings are the nearly 45,000 objects from Karanis, Egypt, which provide detailed evidence of daily life under Roman rule. The 13,000 objects from Seleucia-on-the-Tigris in Iraq represent another major excavation cache. In 1925 Kelsey commissioned Italian artist Maria Barosso to paint watercolor replicas of the murals from the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii; these nearly full-scale watercolors are housed in a specially climate-controlled room in the Upjohn Exhibit Wing. The collection also preserves the thousands of ancient coins donated in the 1880s that formed part of the original core holdings.

The museum occupies Newberry Hall, one of the oldest surviving buildings on the University of Michigan campus. Originally constructed for the Students' Christian Association as a place for religious services and meetings, it was designed by the Detroit firm Spier & Rohns in Richardsonian Romanesque style. Construction began in 1888 and was completed in 1891 at a cost of $40,000. The building is massive and asymmetrical, built of rough-cut, randomly placed local fieldstone with a hip roof broken by parapeted cross-gables. A projecting three-story corner turret with conical roof dominates the facade, while decorative colonettes, arches, and regularly coursed variegated brick bandcourses relieve the heaviness of the stone structure. Named for railroad magnate John S. Newberry, whose widow Helen Newberry contributed $18,000, the building's original name remains engraved on its front. The university leased it in 1921 for classroom space, moved its archaeological collections there in 1928, and purchased the building in 1937. Newberry Hall was designated a Michigan State Historic Site on August 13, 1971, and added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 24, 1972. The 2009 William E. Upjohn Exhibit Wing, named for Mary Meader's grandfather, the noted pharmacist, added more than 20,000 square feet to the rear of the original structure, designed by Chicago-based Hammond Beeby Rupert Ainge Inc.

The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology is located on the University of Michigan central campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. It operates as a unit of the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. The museum displays permanent and special exhibitions in both Newberry Hall, which now hosts changing exhibitions along with event and office spaces, and the William E. Upjohn Exhibit Wing completed in 2009. It conducts educational programs for the public and schoolchildren, sponsors research and fieldwork, and houses the University of Michigan Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology.