Golden Boy to Golden Gate Park: King Tut to Visit San Francisco

"Ancient Egyptian Dog Collar," $85 at the Tut Show in Philadelphia

He's baa-a-a-ack!

The controversial and sometimes downright tacky King Tut extravaganza is the zombie that refuses to die: The de Young museum, San Francisco, recently announced that the bells-and-whistles blockbuster will pack 'em in next year at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, from June 27, 2009 through Mar. 28, 2010. That is a LONG run.

It's now at Dallas till next May. Or is it going to be at Atlanta from November till next May? The official Tut website site has the show playing both venues at the same time, as does Ticketmaster. Does this mean that there are now TWO Tut traveling roadshows? I don't even want to think about it.

Tom Hoving, who, as director of the Metropolitan Museum, orchestrated the landmark, jaw-dropping first Tut show (which I visited twice), took the occasion to provide a detailed rebuttal in ArtNet Magazine to repeated claims by Zahi Hawass, president of Egypt's Organization of Antiquities, that Egypt got no cut of the proceeds from the 1979 show:

The revenues from the catalogue, posters, reproductions, scarves, stationery, and so forth in the museum shops at the six locations in the U.S., plus substantial profits from mail-order, was $7 million dollars, today worth maybe five times that amount....

According to [Daniel] Herrick [the Met's then chief financial officer], "At the conclusion of the U.S. tour I took a check of about $3 million representing the balance of whatever profits had not previously been remitted, bringing the total up to $7 million."

I myself had a conversation with Hoving back then, which I reported in Art in America magazine. At that time, Tom boasted to me that the then novel concept of providing a cut of merchandise proceeds to major lenders, as he had done for Egypt, was a new approach: "I invented it." The rest is history.

The link on the de Young's above-linked press release that's supposed to lead you to information about ticket pricing is broken. Maybe even the web server fainted at the high price ($32.50 at the Dallas Museum of Art), as will many museumgoers in these financially dicey times. Will the gift shop still proffer the $85 "Ancient [sic] Egyptian Dog Collar" (above)?

Maybe if the stock market recovers in time.