“Egypt’s Sunken Treasures” prolongs its stay in Madrid until the end of the year
The exhibit “Egypt’s Sunken Treasures” will remain until next December 30 at the Matadero de Legazpi given its huge success among the public of Madrid. More than 200,000 people have already visited the show since its inauguration on April 15.
Although its closing was supposed to happen on September 28, the organizers decided to extend the exhibit until Nov. 15, and now until the end of the year, according to sources from the organization.
“Egypt’s Sunken Treasures” showcases over 500 Egyptian antiquities rescued from the sea bed by the team of archaeologist leaded by Franck Goddio, including colossal statues some six meters in height and objects that have more than 2,000 years of history.
Translated from madridiario.es
“Wonderful Things”
Wonderful Things: The Harry Burton Photographs and the Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun, sister exhibition to Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs
Opening Friday 14 November at the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta
Trained in the fine arts, Harry Burton was working as a photographer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art when he joined the Howard Carter team. In his eight years with the expedition, he shot a breathtaking 1,400 negatives that bring the viewer into the realm of discovery and the world of ancient Egypt.
Burton romanticizes the expedition, and he is keenly aware of how he could control the public’s perceptions of it through images. But he is also a masterful storyteller, and his artistic eye is really what’s on display here.
The way Burton transfers the lustre of gold to black-and-white film is spectacular. The soft, warm light emanating from the photo of a chariot brings up that universal and unmistakable wonder of gold.
Burton’s deft use of light reaches its greatest in his photos of statues. The light hits the statues’ faces at the right spot to bring each depiction of King Tut to life.
What sets the photographs of King Tut apart is that these were of the first well-photographed, National Geographic-style excavation. Many photographs show objects that don’t even exist anymore, underscoring the importance of historical documentation.
An interesting addition to Burton’s photos are the newspaper clippings from the 1920s covering the excavation. Lord Carnarvon, the chief financier of the expedition, gave exclusive photos and news rights to The Times of London. He was a savvy celeb way ahead of his time.
Excerpted from an article by Bridget Riley for emorywheel.com
Virtual Nile planned for Turin Egyptian Museum
A virtual recreation of the river Nile will soon greet visitors arriving at Turin’s world-renowned Egyptian Museum as part of a sweeping makeover. The virtual waters will flow alongside the escalator leading up to the museum, thanks to the technical wizardry of Oscar-winning set designer Dante Ferretti.
The idea is for visitors to get the feeling of actually traveling the Nile as they get to witness one of the most astounding collections of ancient Egyptian antiquities anywhere in the world. The entire layout of the museum’s exhibition space will be restructured and reorganized, increasing the available space from 6,000 to 10,000m2, allowing for a more fitting display of the Turin museum’s most valuable possessions, such as the Tomb of Kha and the full figure statue of the young Ramses II enthroned.
The Egyptian Museum in Turin houses more ancient Egyptian objects than any other in the world save the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It currently draws around 600,000 visitors each year. Of the museum’s 26,000 pieces, just 6,500 are actually on public display. Its collection includes priceless papyri, among them one of the best specimens of the “Book of Coming Forth by Day” (The Book of the Dead), the oldest ever written evidence of a workers strike, the Erotic Papyrus and history’s first map.
The first phase of the project will get under way in September 2009 and conclude in January 2011 as Italy begins its celebrations of 150 years of unity, with Turin as the country’s first capital. This will be followed by a second phase due for completion in 2013.
Intercultural Contacts in the Ancient Mediterranean may prompt dialogue in the region today
Intercultural Contacts in the Ancient Mediterranean is the title of a conference held in Cairo, Egypt, at the end of October 2008. During four days several speakers read papers relevant to specialists and the broader archaeological community. Of great importance was the location which allowed a greater participation from scholars based in the southern and eastern Mediterranean.
Archaeologist and Director at Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo Kim Duistermaat stressed the need for archaeology to be relevant to the modern world and how this conference was an example of this. Intercultural contacts are a hot issue of our world, and both the Arab and “Western” cultures historically originated on its shores and have co-existed for millennia. Looking to a common past is therefore a good way to start a dialogue and see how different cultures can coexist. The EU supported this view sponsoring the conference. A few presenters (starting with Susan Sherratt) recalled the recent idea proposed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy of a Mediterranean Union suggesting that it happened several times in the past, and, at least culturally, the dialogue between different cultures in the Mediterranean never stopped. Maintaining the distances with the current political projects, it seems however that archaeology can make the difference in prompting dialogue and be part of the intercultural contacts that were mentioned so much during the conference.
Excerpted from a posting by Andrea Vianello at Intute
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Liverpool World Museum’s new Egyptian Gallery opens December 5
The new permanent exhibition contains 1,500 items and covers life in Egypt from the time of Menes, the first king, who reigned 3000 years BC, through to the time of the pharaohs, and on to the periods of the Greek and Roman occupations.
A exquisitely embroidered multi-coloured linen battle girdle worn by the last of Egypt’s great battling pharaohs, Ramses III, will form the centerpiece of Liverpool World Museum’s new Egyptian gallery. The girdle would have been donned by Ramses as he proudly rode his war chariot on campaigns against invaders. Only two similar such items exist.
San Francisco’s Legion of Honor showcases ancient Egyptian masterpieces
An outstanding collection of the treasures of the State Museums of Berlin that honors the contributions of patron James Simon is now at the Legion of Honor until January 18, 2009. James Simon supported excavations in Amarna from 1911 to 1914. The German share belonged to Simon, who first lent the treasures to the Egyptian Museum in 1913 and in 1920 designated the loans as gifts.
QUEEN TIYE, Reign of Amenhotep III. 9 in. – HEAD OF NEFERTITI, reign of Amenhotep IV – Akhenaten, ca. 1345 B.C. Limestone, H 28.7 cm
This 18th-Dynasty sculpture was crafted during the reign of Amenhotep III. Standing nine inches, it is composed of Yew wood, silver, gold, lapis lazuli, and faience. It was a major purchase among James Simon’s Egyptian New Kingdom collection. The mother of Akhenaten, Queen Tiye is realistically depicted as middle-aged with furrowed brows. She possesses a regal and careworn look marked with an awareness of the power she wielded.
This limestone head of Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s queen, comes from the same workshop of the Chief Sculptor Tuthmosis and was by the same hand as the famous Bust of Nefertiti. With black paint on its cheeks and face as sculptors’ guides, the head served as a model for artists producing portraits of the queen.
Review - To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum
For ancient Egyptians, death was the easy part. Gaining eternity was, regardless of rank, a journey that makes Dante’s Inferno look like a walk in the park. And though they could not buy their way into the afterlife, those with means definitely had a strong advantage. That is the context of “To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum” at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.
More than 100 objects spanning 4,000 years illustrate the evolution of a complex system of beliefs and rituals regarding the departure from this life and entry into the next.
We see how those lower on the food chain emulated as best they could the surface feeders and understand that it wasn’t just for show. How one was buried and with what accoutrements were, literally, life and death issues. Amassing the money needed to pay for a proper sendoff could take years.
Preservation of the body was paramount, as was specific identification by name. Different levels of mummification were available, and whether you got the full treatment, in which most of the organs were removed and everything encased in resin, or a simple wash-and-wrap job, depended on your budget. The heart, considered to control thought and emotion, was left in the body. The brain, not believed to have value, was destroyed.
The goal was to arrive in the netherworld beneath the earth, undertake a perilous journey by boat, avoid the onslaughts of demons and find an advantageous spot to settle down permanently.
Unlike other large shows of Egyptian antiquities I have seen, this one is not intended to inspire awe. It gives us a sense of how real people coped with the exigencies of life and aspirations in death. Because so much time is covered, we also see how many practices changed. And though it dwells on the nonrich a lot, most of the objects belonged to those with some means. The poorest people probably could not afford even a simple coffin.
The Brooklyn Museum, which organized the show from its own enormous, world-famous collection, sent few objects made of precious metals and gems. But I really like the show. It has a clear mission and makes sense of the carved stones and old statues that tend to make our eyes glaze over in many antiquities shows.
Excerpted from an article by Lennie Bennett, Times Art Critic for tampabay.com
To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum is at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, 5401 Bay Shore Road, Sarasota, through Jan. 11. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily. Admission, which includes the Circus Museum and Ca d’Zan, is $19 adults, $16 seniors, $6 children 6 to 17. (941) 359-5700; ringling.org.
Giacometti, The Egyptian: The Altes Museum organizes an exhibition showing the Swiss sculptor’s passion for ancient Egypt
Image by joelogon via Flickr
Now integrated into the sculpture halls of the Egyptian Museum’s permanent exhibition, works by Giacometti from the Sammlung der Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung in Zurich invite visitors to listen in to a dialogue between artists as they communicate with each other in a common language of forms which traverses several millennia. By being placed in this context, Giacometti’s work reveals how steadfastly rooted in the past it is, as well as allowing the art of the Ancient Egyptians to once again exude an extraordinary freshness and relevance.
Unlike other modern artists, Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) lived obsessed by Egyptian aesthetics. The Altes Museum in Berlin celebrates the Egiptomania of Alberto Giacometti through twelve sculptures and two sketches by the Swiss sculptor, which today share the same space with the bust of Nefertiti and other works from the museum’s extensive Egyptian collection.
Cult of the Artist: Giacometti, the Egyptian, creates risky analogies between the mute and serene pose of ancient statues from the distant past and the famous elongated sculptures forged in the twentieth century. This experiment is the fruit of labor of two Egyptian art enthusiasts, Wildung and Christian Klemm, members of the sculptor’s foundation in Zurich, who stressed the “Egyptian” in Giacometti, as seen in the “structure” of his works, “the intensity in the gaze” of his characters, and “the spatial distribution of his figures.”
Next to Nefertiti, a muse for Berliners who see in her the most beautiful woman in this city, the spectator finds a bust of Annette Arm, the flesh and blood muse who Giacometti met in Geneva and whom he married in 1949, back in Paris, the city that most inspired him and where he lived for many years. The statuette on a large pedestal, 1952, shows clear plastic symmetries with the figure of an Egyptian gravedigger dating from 1850 BC. The most monumental work of Giacometti in this show is that of the Marching Man, which is oddly contrasted with a wooden figure only ten centimeters in height from 1900 BC. Equally curious parallels exist between the Cube in bronze by the sculptor, with engravings, and the granite statue in the form of a cube of Senenmut, full of hieroglyphics.
The exhibition runs through February 15, 2009.
Extracted and translated from elpais.com
Exhibition: Egypt – Back to the Source
10 Oct. 2008 – 8 Feb. 2009
Glypkotek, Copenhagen, Denmark
Around 1890, the brewing magnate, Carl Jacobsen, founder of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, engaged Denmark’s leading Egyptologist, Valdemar Schmidt, to create an Egyptian collection in the newly-planned museum, and in the course of the following 35 years, Schmidt succeeded in putting together a collection of ancient Egyptian art matching Jacobsen’s other excellent collections of ancient art, from Greece, Etruria and the Roman Empire.
This exhibition is an opportunity to see the works which Schmidt brought back to Denmark from his extensive travels in Egypt. Other works on display come from excavations in that country which Schmidt persuaded the wealthy Jacobsen to sponsor.
Today it would be quite impossible to create a comparable collection, but Schmidt and Jacobsen lived in an age when the Egyptian authorities still permitted a limited, controlled export of antiquities. As a result, the Glyptotek today can present an Egyptian collection of truly international standing.
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is an art museum of international stature in the center of Copenhagen. It houses over 10.000 works of art divided up into two principal collections: Mediterranean cradle of Western culture and Danish and French art from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Egyptian School of Fine Arts marks its first centenary with major art show
The show in the ornate gallery of the Arts Palace comprises 436 paintings and sculptures created by 218 modern Egyptian artists. Hanging on the walls are works by Salah Taher, Ramses Unan, Hussein Bikar, Gamal El-Segini, Beshara Farag and others who enriched Egypt’s arts movement during the 20th century.
The exhibition starts in the palace’s main court and continues upstairs to fill the second and third floors. Visitors are welcomed by the works of the first generation of artists representing the first graduates of the Faculty of Fine Arts, including Mahmoud Mokhtar, Youssef Kamel, Ahmed Sabri and Ragheb Ayyad. The works of the second and the third generations of artists that follow are displayed in chronological order.
The Egyptian School of Fine Arts opened its doors on 12 May 1908, thanks to the generosity of the aristocratic Prince Youssef Kamal. Three years later the first group of students graduated from the school, among them Mahmoud Mokhtar, Ragab Abbas and Mohamed Hassan. The school was placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Education and was thus recognised as a national institute of higher education.
In those days all the instructors were French, and they encouraged students to travel to Paris for further study. Sculptor Mahmoud Mokhtar was among the first group to travel. To his contemporaries Mokhtar was “the fruit of the arts”, with his work echoing the poise and grandeur of ancient Egypt, yet drawing on deceptively simple subjects such as women carrying water jars and rural figures such as the village headman or agricultural guards. Mokhtar brought his nationalist symbolism to a new level of achievement in his famous depiction of Nahdet Masr, “Egypt’s Renaissance”, which represents a woman and a sphinx. This statue now stands in Giza outside Cairo University, and many artists since have tried to emulate Mokhtar’s emotive yet restrained style.
Excerpted from an article by Nevine El-Aref for Al-Ahram
