Here on the University of Michigan's central campus in Ann Arbor rises a building holding more than 100,000 ancient and medieval artifacts. This museum, a unit of the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, holds more than 100,000 ancient and medieval artifacts from the civilizations of the Mediterranean and the Near East. Walk with me through a story that began with one professor.
Francis Kelsey, a professor of Latin here from 1889 until his death in 1927, began acquiring artifacts in 1893 to help his students understand the ancient world. That very year he made his first acquisitions — 108 lamps, vases, and building materials — purchased from Alfred Louis Delattre, the Jesuit priest and archaeologist who was conducting an excavation. Today the Kelsey still displays permanent and special exhibitions, sponsors research and fieldwork, and conducts educational programs for the public and for schoolchildren.
It also houses the University of Michigan Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology. Stand here and imagine students and scholars moving between classrooms and galleries, handling fragments that once belonged to distant civilizations. Picture the museum as a doorway still open onto the ancient Mediterranean and Near East.