Write a 300-word minimum personal response to the online tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (ancient holdings only) or the Penn Museum. Your response must have two components: (1) a summary  of a few artifacts in light of this week’s course material (including cultures and dates/periods), and (2) a personal reflection on the chosen artifacts and on the museum itself. Please provide links to the artifacts you highlight in your Museum Tour Response.

For this week, choose one of the two following museums to tour:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (only the collections that pertain to this weeks material)

Follow this link to go to the online exhibit on Assyria. When at this Web page, note the tabbed directory for “Timeline of Art History” and “Exhibitions and Events” for further touring.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection#!?offset=0&pageSize=0&q=assyrian&sortBy=Relevance&sortOrder=asc&perPage=20&artist=Assyrian

The Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania

The following Web pages list the various galleries and collections. Of particular interest to this weeks Mesopotamian material is the slide tour of the royal cemetery at Ur. Please also note this location for the “Ram in a Thicket” from the Royals Tombs of Ur.
https://www.penn.museum/collections/
https://www.penn.museum/collections/highlights/neareast/ram.php
http://www.ur-online.org/

Please keep in mind that a museum is, originally, a place of learning, accommodating not only artifacts and manuscripts, but also facilitating lectures and performances. The original museum, that at Alexandria, Egypt, in antiquity, set the direction for what a museum should be.

Grading:

The Museum Tour Response must meet the 300-word minimum. A deduction of 10 points per 50 words short will be applied.
A minimum of two artifacts must be addressed in the response (including a hyperlink to each artifact). An automatic 10-point deduction will be applied if only one artifact is addressed, and a 25-point deduction will be applied if no particular artifacts are addressed in the response. “Exhibits” do not count as individual artifacts.
The response is to be written in complete sentences, including proper grammar and spelling. Excessive writing errors will result in a deduction.