Penn Museum (University of Pennsylvania)

Founded in 1887, Penn Museum has always been one of the great archaeology and anthropology research museums. It has approximately one million objects that encapsulates and illustrates human story. Its African collection has approximately 15,000 ethnographic and 5,000 archaeological objects mostly obtained between 1891 and 1937. A great portion of the collection was purchased in 1912 from art dealers in London and Hamburg. The collection had objects collected in the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) by the famous German ethnographer Leo Frobenius.

Some of the collection also came from missionaries working in Africa during the first three decades of the 20th century. This collection has music instruments, sculptures, masks, textiles, utilitarian objects, armaments and ceramics that date from 17th century to the 20th century. They are from various regions of Africa including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Angola, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Madagascar.

Although many of the artifacts are from a purely artistic or aesthetic standpoint, the museum is mainly interested in the ethnographic study collection. The collection contains everything from masks and statuary to architectural pieces, clothing, musical instruments and ordinary household implements. Specific collections include the 17th – 20th century bronzes and ivories from the Benin Kingdom.