Associate Lecturer Jocelyn Boor’s ARTHIST 499: Ad Hoc: Art and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East course visited the the new exhibit, Crossroads of Civilization, at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Carter Lupton, the exhibit’s curator, briefly talked about the thematic concept of the exhibit and the team that created the gallery. The students also saw several artifacts not on display: dedicatory cones for temple walls, and a sample of 4,000 year old bitumen (the “glue of Mesopotamia) from Tell Hadidi (a Bronze Age site in Syria) with the impression of matting still visible. The transition from photographs to real objects was striking.