Museum hosts Silk Road Summer Nights

There’s now a new tune for Wednesday happy hours.

In anticipation of an exhibition opening in February, The Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology kicked off a music series on June 23 that will run weekly until until Aug. 25.

The Silk Road Summer Nights music series will feature a different band each Wednesday, a bar with happy hour specials, and food for purchase.

World music, including Chinese, Middle Eastern, and Italian music, will be played live in the Warden Garden, according to Tena Thomason, Assistant Director of Special Events for the museum.

The event, open to the public, has a pay-what-you-want admission rate, and will be “lively, relaxing, and engaging,” Thomason wrote in an e-mail.

“We expect a large range of audiences from Penn Students to families to people coming from after work from West Philly and hopefully center city,” Thomason wrote.

Select museum galleries, varying from week to week, will have extended hours for the evening as well.

This Wednesday, the Chinese Rotunda, Upper Egyptian Gallery, Iraq’s Ancient Past and the Mediterranean suite of galleries will be open until 8:00 p.m., according to Thomason.

The Secrets of the Silk Road exhibition, moving to the Penn Museum from February 5, 2011 to June 5, 2011 will introduce mummies and rare artifacts found along the ancient Silk Road, a network of paths that linked the continents of Asia and Europe, according to a Museum press release.

The museum is located at 3260 South Street, across from Franklin Field.

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