Museums, Built 1891
The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, a part of the University of Michigan, is situated in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It holds the second largest collection of Parthian ceramics, with a collection of nearly 100,000 objects from the civilizations of the Mediterranean and artifacts from 5000 B.C. to A.D. 900. The remarkable feature of the museum is the magnificent stained-glass window, Tiffany window, on the north side of the gallery. The window was created by Louis Comfort Tiffany, who was one of the America's greatest artisans of the Arts and Crafts period. The museum building was originally built as the home for the Student Christian Association in 1891. It was later purchased by the University in 1937, and was officially announced as a museum in 1953. The museum was named after Francis W. Kelsey, a professor at the university who went on an expedition to Europe and the Near East to acquire early Christian manuscripts and photographs of archaeologically important sites. The artifacts in the museum are arranged in two permanent galleries - one with its collections from Egypt and the Ancient Near East, and the other with items from Greece, Etruria, and Rome. The online data set of the museum has a collection of cuneiform tablets which acquired through the combined efforts of the museum, the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan, and the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI). The museum sponsors research, educational programs for children, oversees fieldwork projects, and serves as the home for the Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology. The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology also hosts special exhibitions from its collections in addition to the traveling exhibitions. The museum galleries are open to the public at no charge, although donations are accepted.
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