Teaching Ancient Egypt in Museums Pedagogies in Practice

What Do Best Practices in Museum Pedagogy Look Like for Ancient Egyptian Material Culture?

Jen Thum, Carl Walsh, Lissette M. Jiménez, and Lisa Saladino Haney

Part 1: Teaching about Tricky Topics

1. Care across Cultures: Shifting Our Approach to the Mummified Body of the Priest Nesmin in Our Museum

MJ Robinson and Gina Borromeo

2. How Did This Get to the Museum? Teaching and Learning about Provenance and Colonialism through Ancient Egyptian Objects

Lissette M. Jiménez and Christine A. Fogarty

3. What to Do with Fakes? Modern Productions of Ancient Egyptian Objects as Pedagogical Tools in Museums

Carl Walsh and Kaelin Jewell

4. Letting the Ancients Speak: Contextualizing Ancient Egyptians through Their Inscribed Objects

Sarah M. Schellinger, Stacy Davidson, and Inês Torres

Part 2: Teaching Towards Accessibility and Inclusivity

5. The Current Scene of Museum Education in Egypt

Fatma Keshk and Shreen Mohamed Amin

6. Breaking Down Barriers at New Egyptian Museums: Accessibility Learning Approaches at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization and Grand Egyptian Museum

Fatma Ahmed Soliman and Azza Elsayed Rezk Abd el Maksoud

7. U Can Touch This! Learning from Phygital Approaches to Ancient Egyptian Built Heritage in Museums

Eslam Nofal, Hendrik Hameeuw, Andrew Vande Moere, and Vanessa Boschloos

8. Curating Conversations around Collections in Care

Ashley F. Arico and Lucas Livingston

9. From Gloom to Zoom: Online Learning at the Egypt Centre, Swansea, UK during the Covid-19 Pandemic and Beyond

Kenneth Griffin, Ersin Hussein, and Sam Powell

Part 3: Teaching across Disciplines

10. Interdisciplinarity as a Means of Promoting Equity, Belonging, and Accessibility: What We Learned from a Workshop with Graduate Students at the Harvard Art Museums

Jen Thum and Rebecca Brown

With contributions from workshop participants Buse Aktaş, Caitlin Clerkin, Matthew D’Ambrosio Griffith, Sarah Eisen, Amanda Gann, Emily Kerr, and İpek Karaoğlu Köksalan

11. Gift of the Nile: Centering the Natural World in Museum Learning about Ancient Egypt at Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Lisa Saladino Haney, Jenise Brown, and Lauren Nofi

12. Creating the Child Tut Learning Experience at the Children’s Center for Civilization and Creativity in Egypt  

Fatma Mostafa and Ossama A.W. Abdel Meguid

Part 4: Teaching in the Community

13. From Glyphs to Bytes: Ancient Egypt and the Future of Digital Humanities in Museum-Based Learning

Elizabeth Minor, Kalei Oliver, and Katie Fleming

14. Combs from Kemet: Exploring the Potential of Ancient Egyptian Material Culture for Working with Incarcerated Communities

Sally-Ann Ashton and Juliet Betts

15. From Ancient to Living Egypt: Centering Lived Experience in Teaching Egypt within and outside Museums 

Heba Abd el-Gawad, Sharyn Volk, Annelies Van de Ven, and Alice Stevenson

16. Expanding the Classroom: British Museum and Tees Valley Partnerships

Loretta Kilroe, Susan Sedgwick, Sarah Welburn, Jessica Robinson, and Laura Condon

17. Broadening School Learning with Ancient Egyptian People’s Histories

Rosanna Evans and Kate Noble

Biography

Jen Thum is Associate Director of Academic Engagement and Campus Partnerships and Research Curator at the Harvard Art Museums at Harvard University. Her work sits at the intersection of museum pedagogy and Egyptology. Jen is committed to celebrating the learning potential of art and artifacts for students and the public alike.

Carl Walsh is a curatorial assistant at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University and former postdoctoral fellow at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. He is an archaeologist specializing in ancient Nubia and cross-cultural interactions in the Mediterranean, western Asia, and North Africa during the Bronze Age.

Lissette M. Jiménez is Assistant Professor in the Museum Studies Program and Faculty Curator of the Ancient Mediterranean at the Global Museum at San Francisco State University. She is an archaeologist specializing in ancient Egypt and a museum professional who has curated exhibits and conducted extensive archival research on archaeological legacy collections of the ancient Mediterranean.

Lisa Saladino Haney is an Assistant Curator at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. She has a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA in Ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian Studies with a concentration in Museum Studies from New York University. She has excavated in Egypt and Oman and enjoys developing engaging experiences for visitors that help them think about ancient Egypt from new perspectives.