Third Tut's the Charm
L.A. has seen not one but two previous tours of the Boy King's treasures
By Steven Rosen
There's a common misconception about King Tut. Yes, he really is dead. And, yes, the current Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is a sequel to the famous 1976-1979 Treasures of Tutankhamun tour that lured some eight million visitors to seven American museums. That one is considered the first of the blockbusters - the dawning of the modern era of museum exhibitions.
But, contrary to common wisdom, that was not the first tour devoted to the Boy King to travel through American museums. There was an earlier one, poetically entitled Tutankhamun Treasures: A Loan Exhibition from the Department of Antiquities of the United Arab Republic.
Between 1961 and 1963, it went to 16 American museums - including LACMA - under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution and the American Association of Museums, according to its catalog. That publication even had a cover that looks remarkably similar to one of the current show's featured objects: a miniature gold coffinette in the shape of the king, which originally contained the mummified Tut's embalmed internal organs.
"No one seems to talk about that one," says John Norman, whose Arts and Exhibitions International helped design and produce the current show. He was not aware of the '60s exhibition until contacted for this story.
That first show was not as large as the subsequent two. All the objects were small, the biggest being only 20 inches tall. The number of objects was also smaller: 34 were on display, whereas the 1976-1979 exhibition had 55, including the show-stopping golden death mask. The current exhibition features 50 objects from King Tut's tomb, plus another 70 ancient Egyptian artifacts.
Still, the '60s exhibit was a major show for its time. Jackie Kennedy was photographed by The Washington Post at its first stop, the National Gallery of Art. Some 118,403 people attended the County Museum, then located in Exposition Park, during the L.A. stop in November 1962.
"That first show was of Tut miniatures - it was a mini-show," says George Kuwayama, LACMA's retired curator of Oriental art (which included Egyptian art). "But it was a spectacularly popular show. There were lines going around the block. Mummymania is innate in human beings." He says he believes admission was 50 cents, and that several of that show's objects are in the current exhibition.
Zahi Hawass, the Egyptian archaeologist who also is secretary general of the country's Supreme Council of Antiquities, says in an e-mail that the first show actually went to 17 American cities until 1964, and some of the objects went on to Canada and overseas. "The exhibit was important because it ... helped people to understand more about ancient Egypt, and that was the beginning of Egyptomania," he says.
Overall, about 1.1 million people saw the '60s Tut show in Washington, Philadelphia, New Haven, Houston, Omaha, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Boston, St. Louis, Baltimore, and Dayton. (Statistics aren't available for two other stops, Detroit and Toledo.) Yet its memory seems to have receded from the public consciousness - as well as institutional records - in Los Angeles, where it was difficult to find anyone who recalled the show. (A reader originally alerted CityBeat about the first exhibition's existence.)
Fortunately, that's not the case at the Dayton Art Institute. "Our archivist is worth her weight in gold," says director Alexander Lee Nyerges in a telephone interview. From studying museum records, he was able to report that each participating museum paid $4,575 for the show, and the insurance premium for its objects was $50,000. Dayton attracted 30,000 visitors, which was outstanding for the time.
"The purpose was to draw attention to the creation of the Aswan Dam [in Egypt]," Nyerges explains. "Money was being raised around the world to save the temples at Abu Simbel. The American government took the lead along with UNESCO."
To prevent the rising waters of Aswan High Dam on the Nile River from submerging the four huge statues on the facade of Pharaoh Ramses II's temple, the monument was cut into large blocks and relocated above the new water line. Besides being a massive engineering project, it was a landmark in Cold War-era international cooperation, especially in the Middle East.
And Tutankhamun Treasures was part of that.Published: 08/04/2005
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I attended the exhibit for my high school art apreciation class at the age of 15. It was an unforgettable experience for me and yet at my current age I was beggining to doubt the event since no one seems to remember it. I'm thrilled to see the 1962 exhibition at the LACMA documented. Thank You!