Betsy M. Bryan is the Alexander Badawy Professor Emerita of Egyptian Art and Archaeology as well as the Museum Director and Curator of the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum. In an interview with The News-Letter, Bryan described her experiences in archeology and field work and reflected on the future goals of the museum.
The News-Letter: How did you become interested in museum curation? How did you become part of that team at Hopkins, and what has been your experience as a member so far?
Betsy M. Bryan: I do a lot of stuff with Egyptian art and always have. Even when I first came to Hopkins, I was actually in the process of working on a large, traveling exhibition that that had me sort of flying back and forth between Baltimore and the Cleveland Museum of Art for the whole first year I was here, and I followed that by doing a big exhibition for the National Gallery of Art in Washington. I've always done things with museums.
The Hopkins museum was something I was involved with from the very beginning [since] I came to Hopkins, and then, when Gilman Hall was about to be renovated in 2006, the dean at that time asked me if I would be the director for the museum. They decided at that time to go along with an idea we had been sort of lobbying for to actually make the museum more central to the building, and they decided to actually design the building that we are in now for the museum.
N-L: What was the goal of the team in staging the recent museum renovation?
BB: In 2021, we had a terrible accident where, one of the glass shelving that we have had in since we started just simply spontaneously broke and fell on top of the objects. It was a case that contained an Etruscan cinerary urn and a variety of other Etruscan pieces, and they were damaged — luckily not ruined, but obviously it was pretty traumatic. We decided, as a result of that, that we had to remove all of the glass shelving in all of the cases in the museum.
And that was an enormous problem: how are you going to put the same number of objects in the case when you don't have shelving anymore? This reinstallation was done in order to try to find ways that we can still put out the same objects and bring in lots that haven't been out before, but we have to do it in a much more creative way that doesn't use shelving. So we're using boxes and things that are mounted on the back of the cases.
N-L: Have you faced any other major hurdles in the organization of the museum throughout your tenure? How do you choose what pieces get mounted and displayed?
BB: We do face a number of real challenges. The primary one we have is that our museum was designed to be visible to people from the outside, so you didn't necessarily have to come in the front door in order to see things. [The objects] are displayed around the outside, and, whenever people change classes and just walk through that atrium space, they are able to actually see a great deal of the percentage.
One of the things that people who designed this museum did not take into account is the level of sun that comes into the atrium now that it's glassed in. They did not put special coating that would protect the objects inside the cases, so we have a lot of difficulty getting to the level of lighting that is acceptable for a whole wide variety of objects. Painted objects are sort of the number one thing that we have to worry about — things that are painted on wood or on organic materials we just really can't use. We have had a number of rather contentious meetings in which we lobby for something going out, and then, ultimately, the conservator says, “I'm sorry, we can't do that.”
N-L: How has your field work with Hopkins helped you collaborate with other faculty and students while exploring your own research interests?
BB: My personal experience has been that being able to take students out to the field to actually do archeology and other tasks associated with our research is one of the most rewarding things that I've done, and I think the students gain from it enormously. I have always tried to take at least one undergraduate, sometimes two, but I've always also kept it that the person really needed to be someone who had taken classes with us and understood what the level of obligation was.
They have never needed to be Archeology majors, just people who really had a strong enough interest that they would really undertake to do the work in preparation. Not surprisingly, I think most of the people I have taken have turned out to be doctors at some point or another, but they have always been remarkably helpful and have gotten so much from it. I stay in touch with many of the student undergraduates that I've had go out to Egypt with me.
N-L: What do you envision the future of the museum and the program to look like? Are there any upcoming projects that will change the tone of the work that you're doing or that will attract different students?
BB: There is a very wonderful, vital, full time staff now, which we never had back in the day. I'm not sure that you will see a real change in emphasis. I think what you will see is that there will be more emphasis on types of projects that will appeal to a broader group of students across the the University.
I think that where people are really going now is to sort of move a little bit away from pure, content-oriented classes into [considering] the meaning of these objects in a variety of settings. Already, we have drawing classes, for example, that come in and use the objects as the basis of their skillset, and engineering classes. When Sanchita Balachandran was here, we were doing a whole lot more with the Department of Material Sciences and Engineering and investigating the actual materials that we have. We are not doing as much of that, and I'm hopeful that that we will find somebody who has that expertise that we can bring back in to do that with.
N-L: How has field work changed over time, especially in terms of prioritizing both preservation and excavation?
BB: I would say that is a totally dramatic change. It is not even just the introduction of technology, but it is really almost more the emphasis on the preservation of anything at an archeological site. At the site that I've worked at for over twenty years, almost everything that we have excavated has been mud brick, which is just really not something that will stick around if you are not careful with it.
Decisions are constantly having to be made about what you want to do if you are going to excavate in Egypt; most houses, even palaces, are built of mud brick. They can be very large, so, if you're going to expose all of that, what are you going to do to take care of it? That has become a very central question for people who work in the field, and the answers are not the same. We actually have taken a very conservative point of view, which is that we would prefer to preserve it on a computer and backfill it rather than try to, as most people today do, cover mud brick with a layer of another artificial material that caps it so that it is stronger.
N-L: I know that some of your focus is in tomb decoration, and you spoke about family homes, palaces and religious sites. What aspect of your field work do you find the most interesting and fulfilling?
BB: I have always enjoyed working in tombs more than I enjoy working in the temple environment. Working at the Mut Temple was a decision I made primarily because it would open up way more opportunities for students; a tomb is tends to be a small thing and it limits how many students you can take. With a large temple site you are also going to have a little bit of almost everything, so it's provided not only opportunities for undergraduates but also for doctoral students to write dissertations on.
I have to admit that, for me, the part that has been the most meaningful is that I love Egyptian art and when you work in a tomb, you are interacting both with an environment of real people and also seeing the remarkable visual material that they left behind. Then you have this additional thing where these tombs are well over 3,300 years old, which means they've been used and reused by people all the way up until just a couple of hundred years ago. They have lives of their own, so trying to recreate and write a biography of a tomb is pretty exciting.
N-L: Lastly, do you have a favorite artifact or piece in the museum that you think is particularly interesting to visitors or the faculty who decided to put it out?
BB: There are so many, but I will pick one. There is this wonderful little piece that I think is actually still sitting in the case when you walk by. It's called a soul house, and it is actually made of a sort of clay that's been hardened. There is a house which is two-storied and then surrounded by a little courtyard, which everybody looks at and says it looks like a ship. It's really just a walled court right around the house, but the thing that's so cool about it is that, sitting in the yard on the ground, there's like a little lady making bread.
Then, if you can turn and look inside the house on the second floor, there's a little guy sitting inside. You know, they're just these tiny, little things. That's what I love about Ancient Egypt: These are just real human beings, and you get a chance to really feel something about what their lives were like.
