01/11/2024
Hello everyone, this is Sanchita Balachandran, director of the Archaeological Museum writing this post. After 13 years at Johns Hopkins, I’ll be leaving as of January 15th to join the Smithsonian as director of the Museum Conservation Institute.
(https://torch.si.edu/2024/01/new-director-of-museum-conservation-institute-comes-on-board-in-april/)
In my time here, I have been privileged to work with ancient people and their things. It is hard to describe the joy, beauty, heartbreak and humanity I’ve been able to witness in the items in our Archaeological Museum collection. I will forever cherish the thousands of hours spent studying these survivors of the ancient past, being with these ancient makers’ things, seeing so many flashes of brilliance and expertise and creativity. I will deeply miss working with the many graduate and undergraduate students who make the museum feel so alive and fulfilling of its purpose, and I’m grateful to the more than 14,000 students whom I’ve seen pass through our doors in my time here. I am so very proud of all we’ve collectively done together, and I am excited to see how the museum continues to inspire, grow, and evolve in the caring hands of Betsy Bryan and Kate Gallagher. Farewell and thank you all.
Image credit: An image from the 2015 course “Recreating Ancient Greek Ceramics” that I co-taught with potter Matthew Hyleck of Baltimore Clayworks. In this image, I am looking into a kiln where our kiln parts were being fired. If you’re interested in learning more about this course which attempted to replicate ancient Athenian pots in our museum, see here:
https://archaeologicalmuseum.jhu.edu/class-projects/recreating-ancient-greek-ceramics/
Image by Jay T. VanRensselaer.
