Exhibit Highlights

Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments

Measuring Difference (Opening 10/20/24)

Artwork credit: Friedemann-Sánchez, Nancy. Loba Garifuna. 2024, 80″ x 40″, Ink on Tyvek and found objects, Courtesy of Instituto de Vision, New York/Bogotá

Today, measurement is everywhere. We understand everything around us in inches, degrees, gallons, decibels, and more. But measurements are human inventions. It is through measures that we learn to see difference, to compare the world.

In the Americas, colonial powers introduced new measurements to describe and exploit the “New World.” Existing ways of understanding and explaining the world and our relationship to others were displaced, cementing European measures as norms and tools of authority. Using examples from across the Americas, this exhibit illustrates what—and who—was measured, and how.

Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East

Mediterranean Marketplaces
Connecting the Ancient World

Much like today, ancient “consumers” were connected to distant markets. Both basic and precious goods from faraway lands “shipped” to royal palaces, elite estates—sometimes even rural households—and technological advances in craftsmanship and commerce transcended boundaries of language, religion, or culture to spread rapidly. Mediterranean Marketplaces: Connecting the Ancient World explores how the movement of goods, peoples, and ideas around the ancient Mediterranean transformed the lives and livelihoods of people at all levels of society, driving innovations that had lasting impacts—even on the modern world. Open at the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East.