University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

The Asian Section collection includes correspondence and receipts all dealing with the donation or sale of artifacts to the Penn Museum from 1890 to 1969. Artifacts are mostly from China, Korea, and Japan. Notable donors include Stewart Culin, William Pepper, Phoebe Hearst, and Worch of Paris, C.T. Loo, and Yamanaka and Co.

Elizabeth Lyons was a native of Michigan who received her B.A. at the University of Michigan and M.A. at Michigan State University. She studied Fine Arts at the Fine Arts Institute at N.Y.U., the Musee Anquantenaire, Brussels andthe Ecole du Louvre, Paris. He rtenure with the University of Pennsylvania Museum began in 1968 following a term as lecturer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. While working in the Asian section of the museum, Ms Lyons took a leave to work for the FOrd Foundation in their program of assistance to Southeast Asia art and archaeology. she returned to the Museum as Keeper of the Asian Section. The Elizabeth Lyons papers are four archival boxes of materials related to her professional career, personal writings, research, and photographs. A large amount of correspondence is filed with the correspondeing series.

The Asian Section collection includes correspondence and receipts all dealing with the donation or sale of artifacts to the Penn Museum from 1890 to 1969. Artifacts are mostly from China, Korea, and Japan. Notable donors include Stewart Culin, William Pepper, Phoebe Hearst, and Worch of Paris, C.T. Loo, and Yamanaka and Co.

Robert H. Dyson, a native of York, PA waa educated in the public schools of Forrest Hills, N.Y. and the Collegiate Institute in Ontario, Canada before enrolling at Harvard University. He graduated from Harvard Magna cum laude with a B.A. in 1950 and completed his Ph.D. there in 1966, specializing in Near Eastern Archaeology. Dyson came to the University of Pennsylvania in 1954 as an Associate in the Anthropology Department and an Assistant in the Near East Section of the University Museum. In 1982, Dyson succeeded Martin Biddle as Director of the Penn Museum. He maintained this position until 1994. The Robert H. Dyson Administrative Records consist of thirty-eight archival boxes of material organized into four series, Alphabetical Correspondence, Chronological Records, Personnel Records and Allocation Records.