The script for Episode 1 of Season 2 (of vampire drama True Blood) called for “a primitive piece of art; like a dancing girl” to be placed on the character Maryann’s coffee table. Suzuki and Cat Smith, Art Director, went to Google to look for images that fit these requirements, hoping to find something that inspired them. They looked at many different types of ancient images including Mycenaean, Etruscan, and Minoan examples. Entering search terms something like “Egyptian female statues,” they came across our very own “Bird Lady.” They printed out a selection of appropriate images and presented them to Alan Ball, the show’s creator.

He was immediately drawn to the “Bird Lady,” seeing something so elegant, beautiful and perfect in her form that she became the obvious choice. As Suzuki pointed out, though she is not the first to do so, this ancient figure looks both modern and primitive at the same time. In terms of the show, she said using it helped to emphasize that Maryann’s character is timeless.

We also found it interesting that Suzuki said they looked at a lot of Egyptian images and chose this one precisely because it is not a “typical” ancient Egyptian representation. This was precisely the thinking behind curator James F. Romano’s choice of the “Bird Lady” as the signature image for the reinstalled Egyptian galleries, which opened in April 2003. As usual, he wanted to get people to stop, look and think twice.

The New York Observer

North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset examined the mummies belonging to the Brooklyn Museum on Tuesday. A CAT scan revealed that one of the mummies, named “Lady Hor,” was actually a man.

Researchers conducted the scans with hopes of gaining further knowledge about their identities, cause of death, and ancient funerary practices.

newsday.com

For the fiscal year 2009, which began on July 1, 2008, the annual operating budget of the Brooklyn Museum is $29 million. Since FY 2008, City operating support to the Brooklyn Museum has been reduced by 32%. The value of these reductions in FY 08, FY 09 and those currently proposed in FY 10 is $2.31 million, and additional cuts are possible. The recent economic downturn has also created a significant loss to the Museum’s endowment, which is currently valued at $65 million, down from $93.1 million a year ago, as well as substantial losses in earned and contributed revenues. The Brooklyn Museum, one of the oldest and largest art museums in the country, currently has a staff of 281 full-time and approximately 40 part-time employees.

Egyptology News

The Brooklyn Museum turns to its antiquities collection for two cost-saving special exhibitions. Both feature works drawn exclusively from the museum’s fine holdings.

Body Parts: Ancient Egyptian Fragments & Amulets (November 2009-October 2011) displays 35 sculptural fragments in a focus presentation that examines anatomical realism in Egyptian art. They reveal the ancient artisans’ careful depiction and notions of the human body and its parts.

To Live Forever: Art and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (February 12-May 2, 2010) brings together 107 artifacts that describe mummification and tomb rituals practiced by the Egyptians in preparation for the afterlife.

Stan Parchin

The only child of a dentist and his wife, Ms. Lucille Virginia Burton was born in St. Louis but moved to Richmond as a child.

After graduating from Barnard College, she worked in public relations for the Metropolitan Museum and eventually landed a position in the Egyptology department of the Brooklyn Museum.

She returned to the Metropolitan Museum as a curatorial assistant in 1960 and rose to associate curator, the post she held in 1977, when she retired to Urbanna. A woman who had stayed in the cliffs of Petra and taught herself to read hieroglyphics, Ms. Burton said the pièce de résistance of her career was overseeing the transfer of the Temple of Dendur from Egypt.

The temple was given to the United States by Egypt in 1965 and allotted to the museum in 1967. Installation was completed in 1978 in the Sackler Wing, which was built around the temple as it was being reassembled.

Richmond Times Dispatch

Art collection and exhibition catalogues, monographs, periodicals, rare books, photographs, artist files, auction sale publications, archival materials, digital information and other e-resources comprise Arcade. The unified interface integrates Dadabase (MoMA’s catalog), FRESCO (Frick Research Catalogue Online) and Brookmuse (the Brooklyn Museum Libraries & Archives catalog).

Anyone with an Internet connection is free to use Arcade.

Stan Parchin

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.