Accessing Artifacts

THE PENN MUSEUM ARCHIVE

Access is ‘a means of approaching or entering a place’. To today’s visitor, it is a means of being in presence of artifacts that sit in an archive deep within the Penn Museum. These artifacts have stories embedded in the materials that describe their origins; every edge and crack on the surface elaborating on the journey that has brought it to this precious and fragile state. If these artifacts hold such importance to our culture, then the new archive should demand that our culture contemplates the privilege of accessing them in a special, restricted, and controlled space deep within the museum. The project questions the traditional notion of accessing and archiving artifacts through the orientation of sequential chambers with reference to a visitor or researchers means of access. The idea of a display chamber evolves into one of a vast, infinite space that is beyond immediate reach, yet tangible to our imagination and desire. A desire so profound that makes the accessing the archives a near religious experience.

Withdrawn Gateway Design Studio by Andrew Saunders / University of Pennsylvania

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