More than five years had passed since my last visit to the Fleming Museum on the University of Vermont campus in Burlington, and on my recent visit, I found some reorganized exhibits, a few previous favorites and some impressive new installations.

POLISHED WITH LEAVES

One new display is entitled "Actors and Exorcists: Masks of Sri Lanka." Used in dances and folk plays but also employed traditionally to cast out illness and disease, these masks are appealing and occasionally awe-inspiring.

Animal faces, such as one of a leopard, come across as playful. Faces of cobras mark a mask designed to cure snakebites. Dashes of red and simulated flames atop the head distinguish one designed to attack malarial fever.

An especially complex creation symbolizes Maha Kola Sanni Yaka, the "overlord" of disease; it's employed when the diagnosis is not clearly known.

Accompanying text describes the process of mask-making on the island. After the wood is dried and smoked, it's carved into the desired shape and polished with leaves. Locally available vegetable dyes provide color. Plant fibers and elephant hairs are added to give the figures hair or a beard.

BEAR-CLAW MOCCASINS

A gallery devoted to "Native American Cultures" represents a marked reorganization of artifacts on this subject. Groupings are arranged by material, with each focusing on a single region.

Carving ranges from a raven rattle (Tlingit) to an Iroquois cradle board to an impressive Haida pipe of jet-black argilite. Beadwork is represented by items crafted by Plains Indians. Whether long strips of beading to cover the seam on a buffalo robe, extraordinary decoration on bandolier bags or just an extra nicety on bear-claw moccasins, this must be very painstaking handwork.

Rugs and blankets woven by Navajo artisans on vertical looms form the nucleus of a section on textiles. I find few items as beautiful as Two Grey Hills rugs, one of which is on display. On the other hand, the fanciful imagery on a Chilkat blanket made by Tlingit natives in Alaska can't fail to capture attention.

A group of ceramics brings the focus closer to home. Pottery jars found in Colchester and Bolton date back five centuries or more. Their St. Lawrence Iroquois creators carefully incised intricate designs. Stone pipes and gouges, also found in Vermont, are thousands of years old. Abenaki basketry, both 19th-century and contemporary specimens, also reflect regional work.

A MUMMIFIED CAT

If you're visiting with kids, it might be best to begin upstairs in the African and Ancient Egyptian Gallery. Seeing an intact mummy, that of an unidentified woman, will mesmerize child and adult alike.

Traditional embalming, according to a well-detailed description on an accompanying panel, took 70 days. That included removal of internal organs for separate processing, drying of the body in a bed of salt, then filling the body cavity with resin-treated linen. Wrapping the body with literally hundreds of yards of linen strips completed the mummification. An adjacent glass case shows off a mummified cat and mummified ibis, testimony to the Egyptian desire to preserve animals associated with selected gods.

I'll need to study other components of the African gallery on a future visit. Brief perusal, however, showed me the similarity of Zulu basketry with the tightly woven specimens of California tribes represented downstairs. Beadwork became popular with African natives, too. For American Indians, the glass beads traded by European settlers supplanted the use of porcupine quills for decoration.