Zawi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, wanted the current King Tut exhibition, which opens Friday at the Discovery Times Square Center, to be shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — as the 1979 show was (see here).

And he did have discussions, a few years ago, with Philippe de Montebello, then director of the Met. They could not agree on the costs/fees, and the Met stood down. That’s what Hawass said on Wednesday at the press briefing.

Of course it couldn’t work. PdM is adamantly against charging extra for special exhibitions — a policy with which I wholeheartedly agree — and Met’s admission is “suggested” at $20, not mandatory. Adult tickets for Tut are $27.50; for seniors, $25.50, and for children, 4-12, $17.50.

Hawass expects to take home $20 million from Tut’s NYC exhibition. The Met would not have delivered that sum. Nor would it, or should it, have accepted a show over which it did not have curatorial control.

This show, while no doubt having beautiful and interesting things to look at, seems to be more about commerce than coherence. It’s a fundraiser, and Hawass — as I said yesterday — makes bones about that. Good for him on that, even if he also believes that Tut “deserves” the Met.

Besides, there are other reasons Hawass should be happier where he — the mastermind of this expedition/exhibition — is. The Discovery Times Square space allows the artifacts to be spread out in a way that most museums could not accommodate. I have not seen the exhibition elsewhere on its travels — at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art or the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, for example (prices in those cities were even higher — $36.75 in Philadelphia, as I recall). But I’d hope those museums did not give over as much space to this show as the DTSC does.

Here, the exhibit flows from one dark (that’s dramatic, theatrical lighting!) space to another, and there are several feet — or more — between displays. That’s good for the crowds: there will be timed tickets, and the organizers have planned for 250 people per half hour. But what would have had to be cleared out to make room for this kind of display?

The press packet contained attendance figures for the Tut tour so far (some estimates or rounded, clearly), minus the deYoung:

LACMA, June 16-Nov. 20, 2005: 937,613

Museum of Art, Ft. Lauderdale, Dec. 15, 2005-Apr. 23, 2006: 707,534

Field Museum, Chicago, May 26, 2006-Jan. 1, 2007: 1,044,743

Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Feb. 3-Sept. 30, 2007: 1,370,000

O2, London, Nov. 17, 2007-Aug. 31, 2008: 1,096,473

Dallas Museum of Art, Oct. 1, 2008-May 17, 2009: 600,000

Fascinating!

 

Before going to the press preview this morning for Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs, which will open at the Discovery Center Times Square on Friday, I had never seen Zahi Hawass in action. But now I know why Hawass, the Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has been so good at elevating the profile of Egyptian antiquities, claiming and repatriating artifacts from Western museums, raising money for archaeology and museums in Egypt, getting very good press in the process, etc. Too good, sometimes.

He’s a charmer, story-teller, teaser and advocate par excellence. Relating a tale about flying back to Cairo on Egypt Air with a coffin recovered with the help of Homeland Security officials here, he said a woman near him, learning that the coffin was in the plane’s cargo area, got the willies. “Don’t worry,” he told her, “If there had been a curse, I’d have taken Lufthansa.”

This came after he mercilessly teased American Airlines, one of the tour’s sponsors, for its checked baggage charges.

Then, when a Mexican reporter asked why Tut wasn’t going to Mexico City’s archaeological museum — he’d pick up on Hawass’s statement that he wished the exhibition were being held at the Metropolitan Museum, instead in of the grimy, commercial Times Square area — Hawass bluntly told him “you don’t pay anything.” Egypt needs the money from this tour, and the last time Egypt lent something to Mexico, it got beans, essentially.

So far, this four-year tour of Tut, seen by more than 7 million visitors, has earned more than $100 million for Hawass’s digs and museums, he said. In New York, where it’s bigger than elsewhere, Hawass is expecting more than 1.5 million viewers in the next nine months, and a take of $20 million more.

One of the new draws will arrive “within a month.” 

[Read more…] about King Tut, The Tour And The Ways Of Zahi Hawass: Good For Egypt

Artists are rallying around the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis, whose collection — as I reported here recently — is still under threat of being broken up by the Administration.

On May 17, Chuck Close, James Rosenquist, Frank Stella, Kiki Smith, Joel Shapiro, Fred Tomasselli, Richard Tuttle, James Sienna, Claes Oldenberg, Tara Donovan and Jim Dine are co-hosting a benefit to raise money for the legal costs of the suit to stop the sales.

Pace Gallery, along with Meryl Rose, a Rose trustees and family member, and Jonathan Lee, chairman of the Rose board, are the other hosts. The benefit will take place at Pace, 545 West 22nd St. There’ll be “cocktails, hors d’oeuvres and cake!” Tickets cost $250.

The organizers have also created a website — here — for their effort, The Rose Preservation Fund (from which I grabbed the picture above). They write:

We do not believe the art is the university’s to sell. We are confident about the prospects for our case and believe that in the end precedent will be set for all museums. The Attorney General of Massachusetts is suing Brandeis as well.

An earlier update is here.

As I’ve said, it seems to me that Brandeis is not in the dire condition it claimed to be in a year ago: its actions have not backed up the crisis. So the art should not be for sale.

Meantime, btw, Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz, who resigned last year, has finally told everyone where he is going: to the presidency of the Mandel Foundation in Cleveland, which has donated money to Brandeis. The news came out the other day, but publications are just catching up with it today. Here’s one article.

 

Speaking of the Guggenheim Bilbao/Frank Gehry, which I was here before detouring into jazz yesterday, it looks as if revisionism — or reality — is starting to set in.

Last Friday, a New York Times article about Metz described how the city is hitching its wagon to the star of a Centre Pompidou-Metz, hoping to attract 200,000 visitors annually:

Metz has dreams of becoming a European artistic hub, but that will mean cashing in on what many here, including the mayor, call “the Guggenheim effect,” after the urban transformation of Bilbao, Spain, that centered on the striking Guggenheim museum designed by Frank Gehry.

But then the article brought Metz down to earth.

For Thomas Werquin, an economist and the president of an association that studies urban planning projects, the Guggenheim effect is a “myth.”

“A lot of cities now think that having a big, branded museum is enough to make a name for themselves; it’s a big problem,” he said. “The museum is a great element of urban marketing, but not a cultural policy.”

For Mr. Werquin, the Guggenheim museum only served as an “accelerator” in Bilbao’s already strong and determined urban policy.

I’m with Werquin. Museums are being asked to do too much. They’re about art, not tourism — except when those two things align.

The article had one very interesting revelation (to me), however: It said that Pompidou-Metz “will have the right to choose among the 65,000 artworks that the Pompidou center in Paris, the largest contemporary collection in Europe, has in storage.” In storage? How will that draw people?

Sounds to me as if they are counting mainly on the architecture (pix here), not a good bet for sustained tourism.

Map: Courtesy The New York Times  

I’m no jazz expert, but I do love the music. A couple of weeks ago, I had a great evening at Dizzy’s Club at Jazz At Lincoln Center, listening to The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, lead by Bobby Sanabria. They were fantastic, and near the end, NEA Jazz Master Candido Camero — he who introduced jazz to the conga drum and who played with Dizzy, among others — came out, climbed up on stage, and put his bandaged fingers to work for the audience. It roared in approval (not that it hadn’t already).

It was a wonderful evening made even more so because I was there on assignment, interviewing Nikki Yanofsky, the 16-year-old Canadian songstress, for New York Magazine.

I’ve written here about Yanofsky before, after hearing her on NBC Nightly News. NEA arts participation surveys show interest in jazz declining, especially among the young, and I hope Yanofsky can help reverse that. She’s got a big voice, and she wants to be a star. Her first U.S. album, “Nikki,” will be launched at Dizzy’s on May 4.

“Nikki” is a mix of standards like “Take The A Train” and “I Got Rhythm” with songs she co-wrote with Jesse Harris, Ron Sexsmith and others. She added vocalese to “A Train,” though — to make it her own. I predict that reviews from jazz journalists will be mixed (too tame for some, too retro, etc.), but you never know. And because I think she can create jazz followers among her generation, I’m hoping the album is a smash. (Jazz is getting some help from Michelle Obama, too, of course, which if sustained coule be a real plus.)

Here’s the link to my New York article.