... One show that's going to make a lot of headlines, but won't make its way to New York is the blockbuster "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," a show of roughly 130 artefacts from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.   It begins at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art this fall and will then move to Fort Lauderdale in December; Chicago next spring; and Philadelphia in 2007.   Many of you will recall the first King Tut exhibition, mounted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art back in 1976.   That exhibition was the very first museum "blockbuster," followed by MoMA's Picasso retrospective, in 1980.

Since then, it seems, museum shows, not unlike movies, are ultimately judged by how well they do at the box office, not by how well they serve our greater cultural interests.   The Met rightly turned down the current King Tut extravaganza - a show that is closer to a publicity stunt, designed to bring viewers in, than it is a scholarly event...

What You Won't See Here, The New York Sun, New York, USA, September 01, 2005.

A colossal, 4,000-pound, red granite head of Rameses II towers over visitors in the Dayton Art Institute's roomy Great Hall.

In another room filled only with golden objects, a mask, girdle, statues, plaques and thin sandals beckon with a soft, alluring gleam.

... including [a] stunning life-size replica of the oval-shaped burial chamber of the New Kingdom pharaoh Thutmose III (1479-1425 BC).   It replicates every inch of the room down to nicks in the plaster and cracks in the ceiling...

A trove of Egyptian treasures, Cincinnati Enquirer, Ohio, USA, September 02, 2005.

This is the journey normally taken to see the burial chamber of New Kingdom pharaoh Thutmose III, who ruled Egypt during 15th century B.C.:

Fly to Egypt.

Travel 500 miles south of Cairo along the Nile River to Thebes.

Go west into the desert to the Valley of the Kings.

It's less exhausting and expensive, if not as adventuresome, to hop in a car, drive to Dayton, park in the lot of the Dayton Art Institute...

Drive right up I-75, find a pharaoh's tomb, Cincinnati Enquirer, Ohio, USA, September 02, 2005.