My Day at the Penn Museum

Good day today! I rolled into Center City Philadelphia with Chris on the Norristown line. Saw him off to school then I stayed on the train two more stops to the University of Pennsylvania campus. I was one of Laurel Hill Cemetery’s representatives at the Greater Philadelphia Area Docent Consortium’s Crossroads 2022 program.

The GPADC gathers together tour guides and docents from many historical/cultural sites in the Philadelphia area. The theme for this presentation was ‘Interconnecting Cultures, Creating Communities.’

The keynote speaker was Brian Daniels, the Penn Cultural Heritage Center Director of Research and Programs. Daniels presentation, “Connecting Through Cultural Heritage: The Work of Museums in Addressing Community Needs” covered more ground that I can touch on here, but it was thought-provoking and heartfelt. I will be certainly thinking about how Brian’s ideas relate to my tour guide work at Laurel Hill.

So the official program, which also included lunch, a talk with Christopher Woods, the new director of the Penn Museum, and a tour of the African section of the museum, was excellent. Plus it was fun to see tour guide friends and meet some new ones. The day ended with a spontaneous and hilarious conversation with a stranger in a high-ceilinged hall filled with antiquities before I had to catch the train back to Norristown.

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