Penn Museum

Indicates wheelchair-accessible. Events are free unless otherwise indicated. Symposiums & seminars Election 2012: Tax Reform with Bruce Bartlett and Rosanne Altshuler. National Constitution Center, 525 Arch St; reservations are required, 215-409-6700 or www.constitutioncenter.org . $10 for nonmembers, $7 for members, students, teachers. 6:30 p.m. Tue. Lectures & literature African American Read In Chain , members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority will share their favorite readings.

TRAMPING THROUGH jungles and climbing down claustrophobic tunnels in search of the remains of ancient Mayan civilizations was what Robert J. Sharer did for a living. It was how the University of Pennsylvania archaeologist got his fulfillment and how he earned him an international reputation in his field. He died Thursday of pancreatic cancer at age 72. One of Sharer's most exciting discoveries was the tomb of an ancient Mayan king in 1993 at the Honduran city of Copan. The king is believed to be the city's founder.

Visitors to the region's non-art museums will have a particularly eclectic array of exhibitions and programs to choose from this spring - from a celebration of the 200th birthday of America's oldest natural history museum to an examination of Bruce Springsteen, Founding Boss, at the nation's only museum devoted to the U.S. Constitution. Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls will make an appearance in town, and the clock is already ticking on an examination of the Mayan obsession with time.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH Unsung heroine Moonstone Art Center wraps up its commemoration of the life and accomplishments of antilynching crusader, suffragist, journalist and speaker Ida B. Wells with a discussion of the relationship between 19th-century lynching and modern-day capital punishment. Criminal defense attorney Michael Coard, Witness to Innocence activist Shujaa Graham and others to speak. Ethical Humanist Society of Philadelphia, 1906 S. Rittenhouse Square, 2 p.m. Sunday, free, 215-735-3456, moonstoneartscenter.org.

Where does the Silk Road run? Not through Philly, apparently. The highly touted exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, featuring mummies and artifacts from China, will open as planned this weekend - only without the Chinese mummies and artifacts. Chinese officials informed the museum that the "Secrets of the Silk Road" exhibition pieces could not be displayed in Philadelphia despite having been shown in California and Texas, said Darien Sutton, a museum public-relations coordinator.

Harry C. Rogers Jr., 87, the A.W. Grosvenor Professor of Materials Engineering at Drexel University from 1984 to 1991, died of pneumonia at Albany (N.Y.) Stratton VA Medical Center on Wednesday, March 2. He was a longtime resident of Berwyn. Dr. Rogers was head of Drexel's department of materials engineering from 1987 to 1990. After graduating as salutatorian at Baldwin (N.Y.) High School in 1941, he interrupted his studies at DePauw University in 1943 to serve in the Army. His son, H. Carton III, said his wartime work helped develop fuses for airplane bombs at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

Museumgoers this fall will be able to piece together crime-scene evidence via mass spectrometry, ponder bloodsucking creatures of the imagination, and consider the imperfect mosaic of nationhood as a parade of diverse and unusual exhibitions and programs marches through the region's specialized museums. Offerings include the start of a yearlong project seeking to "imagine Africa," a show of works exploring the African American imagination, an outdoor exhibition focusing on worldwide malnutrition, and a portable greenhouse of the future, complete with room for future fossils - a kind of museum-to-be.

What do you do when the museum show you've been planning for 18 months loses out on the very Chinese artifacts it was supposed to showcase, including two mummies? You build "dummy mummies" - as the curatorial consultant called them - that look as close to the real thing as possible. That's what the enterprising staff at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has done, as the museum continues to negotiate the display of the antiquities with the Chinese government.

Archaeology can fascinate kids long before they understand the term itself, and the subject continues to intrigue adults long after they graduate with degrees in seemingly unrelated subjects. That's because archaeology is essentially the study of our culture and, as humans, we tend to find ourselves (and by extension, our ancestors) fascinating. What's more, archaeology encompasses many areas - ancient art and architecture, food and cooking, religion, science, the Earth itself - and it brings the past to life.

Scene: The afternoon sun glows brightly over the architecture and garden of the Penn Museum. Leaving my anthropology class, I always use the main entrance instead of the academic one that's been surrounded by construction for all of my four years at Penn. On the way out, I looked back and saw the scene - which I can't describe. You can't describe a sunset. I stopped. That's the most important phrase here. I was running late to my next class, but I stood still and looked. I paused in the middle of my busy day, with its little trials that have seemed more insurmountable lately.