Adopt an Object

Adopt an item from our collection! Below is a list of objects up for adoption.

For one year, your name (or a designee’s) will appear on the object label of the work, letting the community know that you value that work, and are contributing to its preservation and to research about it.

Your contribution, ranging from $500 to $2,500, also helps support the ongoing care and management of the Institute’s holdings generally, including research- and conservation-related activities.

To select the object you wish to adopt, please contact the Development Department at speckb@albanyinstitute.org.

Angel at the Sepulcher by Erastus Dow Palmer (1817–1904)

Donated to the Albany Institute by Walter Launt Palmer

The marble original statue, from which this 1868 plaster cast was made, sits in the Albany Rural Cemetery, looking out over Albany’s past generations. The marble was commissioned by Robert Lenox Banks, a businessman, for his first wife Emma Rathbone Turner, and is considered one of the most impressive statues in the cemetery. The cast was given to the Institute by Walter Launt Palmer in memory of Mary Jane Seamans Palmer. It is on display in our Sculpture Gallery, which is the original entrance to the Albany Institute.

Mummy Tag

Donated by Sara Paine Potter

Made of wood, this Ptolemaic period “toe tag” identified a deceased individual in an embalmer’s workshop while being prepared for mummification. It is on display in our special gallery devoted to ancient Egypt.

Chest

Made from wrought iron, this chest was manufactured in Nuremberg or The Netherlands between 1675 and 1725. Chests like these were used to safeguard a home’s valuable belongings. It is on display in our Traders and Culture Gallery, where visitors learn about Albany’s early history.

Silver Teapot

Attributed to Jacob Gerritse Lansing (1681–1767), this teapot is evidence of a social change that swept the Western world in the mid-eighteenth century: the tea fad. Already in vogue in London by the 1650s, tea drinking came to the colonies by the end of the seventeenth century, as did the call for its accoutrements, such as teapots, sugar and cream bowls, and tea caddies. The earliest designs were modeled after oriental ceramics and embellished to suit Western tastes. It is on display in our Traders and Culture Gallery, where visitors learn about Albany’s early history.

$2,500 a year

Albany Mummies

Our two mummies, one twenty-first dynasty and one Ptolemaic, are the only objects in our collection that have been on continuous view since their acquisition. They were purchased from the Cairo Museum in 1909 by a board member and shipped to the United States by steamer. They have enthralled a century’s worth of residents, tourists, and scholars and have affectionately come to be called “The Albany Mummies.” They are on display in our Ancient Egypt Gallery.

The Dog Mummy

Originally assumed to be a cat, this small animal mummy was purchased in 1958 from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When it was CT scanned in 2004, experts determined, based on the structure of its skull, that it was a dog. The mummy came from a Roman cemetery in Al-Deir in the Kharga Oasis of Egypt. It is on display in our Ancient Egypt Gallery.