When West Went East

Victor Mair first encountered the Bronze Age mummies of China’s Tarim Basin 23 years ago. He—and others—have been trying to figure out what those people were doing there ever since.

More Light

“I think that what is changing about my writing is my willingness to go darker so that I can come out with more light,” says memoirist and fiction writer Beth Kephart C’82. In her new novel, set in Philadelphia during the Centennial, a young woman contemplates suicide following the accidental death of her twin.

At the Mosque Door

Painting by Osman Hamdi Bey, who played a major role in the Penn Museum’s first archaeological dig, at Nippur in the late 1800s.

Art History Lessons

An exhibit at the Arthur Ross Gallery offers a revealing look at some treasures of the University’s art collection—but a walk around campus works, too.