Brilliant pages

The French use the phrase cr�me de la cr�me for "the best of the best." A recent publication and small gem of an exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, titled "Magnificent Objects," is by any measure the risen cream.

Simply put, the catalogue Magnificent Objects is a full-color book depicting and explaining the curators’ choice of the best items in the entire collection.

Throughout the past two years, curators have been doing the impossible: selecting 220 objects from the vast collection of more than a million items. The result is the best-looking coffee-table book one could hope for.

The effort, coordinated by senior editor Jennifer Quick, is all the more amazing in that it was done "sub rosa" as a surprise tribute to retiring museum director Dr. Jeremy A. Sabloff, who just ended a 10-year tenure.

To accompany the book, the museum has set up a mini exhibit of 30 of the items so visitors can see the real things that are depicted in the full-color catalogue. In the display are basket earrings from the region near Troy, a silver box from Nepal, a gold lime container from Colombia and a gold chain from what is now Israel.

The book includes Navajo weavings, a rock crystal, a limestone figure of Ramses II, a necklace from Africa, ceremonial pipes from North America, a feather headdress from Brazil, much African sculpture, decorated Native American clothing and accessories, jewelry from many different cultures, masks and an absolutely elegant wooden food bowl from Papua, New Guinea.

Some of the featured items come from celebrated museum "digs" dating back to Indiana Jones days. There is a clay cuneiform tablet from Nippur, a sarcophagus lid from what is now Israel and a "fighting jacket" from a 19th-century expedition to Borneo. The most famous expedition was to Ur during the 1920s and ’30s, and that resulted in a number of items in the top 220.

In his tenure beginning in 1994, Dr. Sabloff advanced the museum both in the back rooms with new storage facilities and renovations and in the "front" room, where the museum has consistently presented hugely successful exhibitions that have appealed to a broad range of interests.

One of the concepts the museum has successfully communicated is the absolute beauty of artifacts that, in past decades, might have been classified as archaeology or anthropological objects, which disqualified them from comparisons with "fine art." The object lesson is clear: The best of the museum’s artifacts overwhelm many of the possessions of the city’s "fine arts" institutions. No wonder the curators at art museums have shunned comparisons.

The proof is in the durability of the aesthetic quality. Much of modern art, for example, seems foolish and dated alongside ancient objects of more sustaining value. One of the problems has been that professionals in "fine arts" museums are quick to made judgments, and woe betide those who might disagree about the emptiness and silliness of, let’s say, a urinal shown as art.

The archaeologists and anthropologists, by contrast, have a much more scientific outlook and tend to present rather than evaluate. By doing so, they are following their professional standards — but it then depends on viewers to make the aesthetic decisions based on their emotional responses.

This is not the "I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like" school. This is the literal transformation of power from the high priests of art to the common folks.

There is no mistake in the location of the city’s Museum of Art, placed atop a mountain like a temple. Nor is there a mistake about the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology being located across the street from a football field.

For a look at the city’s finest collection of beautiful objects, get there by Sept. 12. The book, Magnificent Objects, can stay on the coffee table much longer, even if the grandkids add their own art to its pages.

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Magnificent Objects
Display through Sept. 12
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
3260 South St.
215-898-4000
Museum closed Sundays and Mondays
$8 adults; $5 ages 6-17, over 62 and full-time students
www.museum.upenn.edu