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Yurcho, Katie

Tenor of Our Times 
Volume 14 Article 10 
4-2025 
Pompeii Exhibition 
Katie Yurcho 
Harding University, kyurcho@harding.edu 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.harding.edu/tenor 
 Part of the History Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Yurcho, Katie ( 2025) "Pompeii Exhibition," Tenor of Our Times: Vol. 14, Article 10. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.harding.edu/tenor/vol14/iss1/10 
This Special Report is brought to you for free and 
open access by the History and Political Science at 
Scholar Works at Harding. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Tenor of Our Times by an authorized 
editor of Scholar Works at Harding. For more 
information, please contact 
scholarworks@harding.edu. 
Tenor of Our Times 
 
44 
 
 
 
 
 
Author Bio: 
 
Katie Yurcho is a junior Molecular and Cellular Biology major from 
Henrietta, TX. She has a special interest in the field of genetics and has 
plans to pursue genetic counseling after graduation. While her education 
has focused on the natural sciences, she feels as though she has studied 
history for her whole life thanks to her older brother, Trent, who studied 
in the Harding history department. 
 
 
 
  
 
Tenor of Our Times 
 
45 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Karl Brullo, The Last Day of Pompeii 
Image courtesy of Google Art Project 
 
Tenor of Our Times 
 
 
 
POMPEII EXHIBIT 
By Katie Yurcho
 
The trip to the Pompeii exhibit was an enlightening, and 
very interesting marriage of history and science. We listened to 
presentations from Harding professors of the history (Dr. Julie 
Harris) and biology (Dr. Rebekah Rampey) departments to learn 
about the time period, the disaster itself, and the biological 
technology that has allowed new insights into Pompeii.  As a 
biology student, it was very interesting to hear about the 
technologies that were used to gain new knowledge about the 
people and the eruption. Pieces of “ancient DNA” were obtained 
from the bones found in the remains and was used to reconstruct 
some of the genome of the Pompeiians. The Ancient DNA 
sequencing technology was able to fill in a few details that 
completely changed our perspectives on the people of the time and 
rewrote some of their stories.  
The exhibit included an immersive simulation of 
Vesuvius’s eruption, artifacts and art from the time, and replica 
plaster casts that had been made from the remains of people killed 
in the disaster. All of this, especially the casts of the cavities left in 
the ash by the bodies, were good reminders of why we want to 
continue to study and understand these people. I’ve never really 
explored the junction of history and biology in this very current, 
relevant manner and it was a real joy to find that these two fields 
can be combined to forge new paths of knowledge and 
understanding.  
          The Pompeii Exhibit is a traveling exhibition with over 150 
artifacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum from the eruption of Mt. 
Vesuvius in 79 AD.  The majority of the items in this collection are 
items loaned out by the Naples National Archaeological Museum 
and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.  Graceland, the museum 
home of Elvis Presley in Memphis, TN, hosted the exhibit in one 
of their ten exhibit halls from November 15, 2024, to April 13, 
Tenor of Our Times 
 
47 
 
 
 
2025.  The exhibit moved next to St. Louis, Missouri and is set to 
open May 16, 2025.   The Clifton L. Ganus, Jr. Chair for History 
and Political Science, the Biology Department, and Phi Alpha 
Theta sponsored a trip to the Memphis exhibit on February 8, 
2025.


English

Pompeii Exhibition

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