Passionate Curiosities
Tales of Collectors & Collections from the Kelsey Museum
by Lauren E. Talalay and Margaret Cool Root
Paperback (Published)
(August 2015)
ISBN: 9780990662334
10 x 10 inches
Price: $29.95
In stock
The collection of the University of Michigan’s Kelsey Museum of Archaeology explored through the people whose intellectual interests and financial backing brought artefacts to Ann Arbor from the 1880s to the 1990s. The Museum is internationally recognized for antiquities of the ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome, Egypt and the Near East.
Passionate Curiosities explores the collections held in the University of Michigan’s Kelsey Museum of Archaeology through the lens of the people whose intellectual interests, financial backing, and social networks brought artifacts to Ann Arbor from the 1880s to the 1990s. Through purchases and expeditions, these individuals shaped the Museum’s internationally recognized antiquities from the ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome, North Africa, Egypt, and the Near East, extensive photographic documentation of these regions from the early 1900s, and significant assemblages of early Christian and Islamic visual culture. An intriguing array of personalities–from archaeologists, missionaries, and diplomats to industrialists, bankrollers, and inventors–weave through these pages. They include Ernst Herzfeld, the eminent Orientalist who helped forge antiquities legislation in Iran; Luigi Cesnola, the rapacious harvester of Cypriot sites; Esther Van Deman, the pioneering feminist and scholar of Roman construction techniques; and Samuel Goudsmit, the renowned nuclear physicist and avid Egyptologist. World-famous dealers who established standards in antiquities connoisseurship likewise populate these sagas. Readers will encounter Edgar J. Banks, a swashbuckling purveyor of Mesopotamian antiquities and entrepreneur of biblical documentary films; Maurice Nahman, the “lion of Cairo”; and the colorful members of the Tano dealer dynasty in Egypt. This copiously illustrated book will interest general readers as well as scholars curious about the holdings of the Kelsey, early collectors and dealers, and the history of museums.
- By (author) Margaret Cool Root
- By (author) Lauren E. Talalay
"Talalay and Root address a diverse audience of students, scholars, museum staff and volunteers, as well as visitors, casual and loyal. Passionate Curiosities finds its place alongside a range of other recent publications that illuminate the historiography of the Kelsey, and provides an essential reference on the history of collecting at this important university museum." --Marden Fitzpatrick Nichols and Elizabeth Dospel Williams, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2016.07.12
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Other Titles in this Series
Karanis, An Egyptian Town in Roman Times
Discoveries of the University of Michigan Expedition to Egypt (1924-1935)
Volume 1
From the Motor City to the Mediterranean
Travels of a Truck, a Sedan, and an Inquisitive Photographer, 1924-1926
Volume 18
Life, Death and Afterlife in Ancient Egypt
The Djehutymose Coffin in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology
Volume 9
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