William L. Potter and Joanne S. Ruckel Photograph Collection

The Archives is the administrative memory of the Penn Museum, as well as the repository for the scientific records of the institution's many held expeditions worldwide. By virtue of its impressive photographic and art collections, the Archives also functions as the de facto Museum curatorial section for prints, drawings, and photographs. Many of these items, such as 19th-century albumen photographs of sites from Egypt to the American Southwest, were collected for research and display in the late 1800s and early 1900s.