Last year, I was awarded the Peet travel award to support my research as part of my PhD, ‘Portraits of Hybridity’.
The British Museum
Through the funding, I was able to visit the British Museum, London, to consult the archives and exhibition records for data collection for one of my thesis chapters, as well as visit the Legion: Life in the Roman Army exhibit which displayed two mummy portrait panels that were part of the corpus I was researching.
The Legion exhibit, focusing on the life of a soldier from Roman Egypt, examined how those living under Roman rule throughout the empire experienced life, death, and everything in between. My main interest in the exhibit came in the form of mummy portrait panels from the Roman Fayum, which are the focus of my research.
My thesis
In my thesis, I explore how mummy portrait panels have been transferred between museums and archaeologists, how they have been interpreted (or misinterpreted), and how museum displays of portrait panels have impacted audiences’ understanding of them as objects of human commemoration which would (had it not been for 19th and 20th-century archaeologists) have been attached to mummified remains.
I evaluate how museums past and present have placed the panels in exhibitions, how those exhibitions have changed, and review the most recent displays of portraits to better understand how museum interpretation of portrait panels and their context is shifting towards a more human-centred, empathetic approach.
How the Legion exhibit helped me write my thesis
Therefore, visiting the Legion exhibit to see how these two panels were displayed was crucial to finishing my chapter examining the reception of them – it was particularly useful to see how the portraits were used as examples of a ‘military family’, and how they fitted into the overall narrative of the exhibit. As a result of this visit, I was able to write a section in my thesis based on how the panels were used and evaluate the interpretation presented by the museum.
Furthermore, while at the British Museum, my visit allowed me to access the British Museum Archive, to see exhibition materials and records from the 1997 Ancient Faces exhibit. This display represented the first full-scale exhibition of portrait panels that viewed them not as pieces of artwork but of archaeological value, placing them and the mummies they belonged with alongside objects of Egyptian funerary importance. It also presented some of the first scientific analysis performed on the panels and therefore shaped how museums and scholars engage with the portraits to this day.
As a result, I needed to visit the archive to learn more about how the exhibition was put together, its background, and how each portrait was displayed, so that I could compare the 1997 examples to the modern-day interpretations such as those seen in Legion. This data collection was crucial to the completion of my thesis chapter, as it allowed me to access information regarding the exhibit that was otherwise unavailable elsewhere.
Final thoughts on winning the Peet Award
Ultimately, the Peet Award allowed me to conduct data collection through a research visit I would not have otherwise had the means to do. It was invaluable to the writing of my thesis chapter and allowed me to finish my analysis of how portrait panels were received in museum contexts. The award was vital in allowing me to finish the work required and enhanced my overall understanding of how portrait panels are treated in modern displays.