If you live in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Minneapolis or Los Angeles, you may know that Zahi Hawass is traveling around the United States, trying to drum up Egyptian tourism — not to mention himself and his interests. Why Cincinnati, after all, except that it’s currently the home of Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt (more about which in a minute), a show he stars in.
Today, Hawass got the news he has been predicting: In the case that charged him with corruption at the bookshop at the Egyptian museum, he was acquitted by a criminal court, according to Al Ahram, reversing an administrative court’s decision that may have sent him to jail for a year. (On his website, Hawass said he has been declared innocent.)
Just over the past weekend, rumors were flying that he was in jail already (denied, accurately).
All of this seems to leave Hawass free to pick up his life’s work as it was before the revolution, and maybe add to it. Tourism to the land of the pharoahs is down, according to recent tourism statistics, because of the January 25 Revolution and the resulting instability. (The State Dept. has lifted its “travel warning” for Egypt, but replaced it with a “travel alert” advising citizens to respect curfews, avoid demonstrations, and otherwise be cautious.) This trip can’t hurt his stature with the new government (he was, you’ll recall, promoted by the former regime of Mubarak, then fired, rehired and installed again as Minister of State for Antiquities).
Today, Hawass is out in the West, visiting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and soon the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, and the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno.
Hawass also recently updated the world on the status of looted objects in Egypt. He says the losses were exaggerated and that many objects have been recovered.
To judge from the Cleopatra exhibit, Hawass is sure he is on the trail of her tomb — his next conquest. The show, which I saw recently in Cincinnati, is a shocker, and not in a good way. True, it is not a museum show; it was organized by for-profit groups that include Arts and Exhibitions International and the National Geographic. But there are so many things wrong with it, it’s hard to enumerate.
Here are a few: the show contradicts itself (e.g., calling Cleopatra a beauty in one place and acknowledging that she wasn’t in another), an animation explaining the Isis myth is worse than the worst Disneyfied cartoon you can imagine, the music is awful, the audioguide has nothing to do with the objects on view, most of the objects predate Cleopatra, often by centuries, on and on.
I was surprised to read a positive review last summer in The New York Times, in all honesty.
This is a perfect example of why many for-profit shows are not museum-worthy. But the exhibit is seeking more venues. I hope no art museums succumb.