Bowers Museum will celebrate the new state-of-the-art Dorothy and Donald Kennedy Wing with a week of events culminating in the grand opening on Sunday, Feb. 18, 2007 and two spectacular new exhibitions — “Ansel Adams: Classic Images” and “Treasures from Shanghai: 5000 Years of Chinese Art and Culture.”

The series of events begin on Sunday, Feb. 11 [2007] at 4 p.m. with a benefit for the inaugural opening of the Norma Kershaw Auditorium and the launching of the Distinguished Lecture Series. Renowned Egyptologist Mark Lehner presents “Discovering the Lost City of the Pyramids,” a recount of his adventures in Giza and the discovery of a major part of the city of the pyramid builders that illustrates a critical threshold in history when the first cities appeared on Earth. Admission for the lecture and champagne reception is $100 for members and $125 for the general public...

Bowers Museum to Celebrate New North Wing with a Week of Events Culminating in the Grand Opening on Sunday, Feb. 18, 2007, with Two Stunning Exhibitions — Ansel Adams and Treasures from Shanghai, Bowers Museum, Business Wire, USA, November 16, 2006.

Little in Henri Loyrette's demeanour suggests an implacable revolutionary. Yet this affable 54-year-old Degas scholar has steamrolled resistance to shake up one of the most venerable institutions.

In 2001 he took over the Louvre, the grandest cultural institution in France, a country that places enormous value on its culture as well as its institutions, and since then Loyrette has sped reform at a dizzying pace.

The first thing he did was to wrest administrative control of the museum from the hegemonic French Ministry of Culture. Then he set about expanding its buildings, its public programs and its scholarly remit. His ambitions were high: to change the Louvre from a grand but reified presence into a questing international player. Opposition has faded as the Louvre has flourished.

"It was not easy, but I'm very tenacious," he says with a smile. "I took the position to make it work, and there was no other solution. It was obvious, in a way."

Loyrette was in Australia this week for the opening in Canberra of an exhibition, Journey to the Afterlife: Egyptian Antiquities from the Louvre, at the National Gallery of Australia...

Tenacious cultural renovator, Miriam Cosic, The Australian, Australia, November 18, 2006.

We are at the British Museum in London and Ingrid, our Blue Badge guide, is doing her best to instil in us the basics of Egyptology. So far we’ve learnt the distinction between Old Kingdom (pyramids) and New (Tutankhamun and the Valley of the Kings). We’ve seen the Rosetta Stone and heard how hieroglyphics were translated. Now she is explaining how the Egyptians believed their hearts would be weighed for virtue before they were allowed into the afterlife.

I am not usually one to swot up before going on holiday, but sometimes necessity is the mother of invention. To get from Glasgow to Egypt — where I’m off on a whistle-stop tour of ancient sites — I have to go via London. Where better to get in the mood than at one of the world’s greatest collections of Egyptian antiquities? Ten hours after walking down the museum steps, we are in Cairo. On the journey from the airport, horn-happy drivers fling themselves carelessly from lane to lane. Cheery lights adorn the mosques to mark Ramadan. Shopkeepers man neon-lit soft-drink stalls, while on a grass verge two teenage boys practise somersaults in the gloom.

I am just pondering how ancient Egypt couldn’t seem farther away when I catch my first sight of the pyramids at Giza — three menacing shadows cutting the horizon like saw teeth...

Temple worship, Adrian Turpin, The Times, UK, November 19, 2006.

I am very honoured to be the first outsider admitted to Britain's first purpose-built hotel for the eternal corpse, a phenomenon that has enthralled and terrified us for centuries. Such is the enduring fascination that some of these mummies are starring in a Sunday night history quiz on Channel 4.

They may be famous, but that doesn't make them particularly pleasant company, though. I wouldn't want to spend a night in here. In fact, I would be pretty unamused if anyone turned out the lights and left me with row upon row of ancient Egyptians dating back up 4,000 years, not to mention assorted mummified cats, cows, sheep and birds.

I know all those horror films with Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing and some runaway bandage-draped zombie were complete hogwash. I don't believe any of those tales about the terrible curses which befell anyone intruding on a Pharaoh's tomb. But all the same, hang on, did something just move . . .?

I step into one dingy aisle and come face to face with the image of a middle-aged priestess who is thought to have died around 700BC. She has no coffin, but is wrapped up in cartonnage, a sort of linen-based papiermachè casing covering her bandaged body. X-rays have shown that her vital organs were removed, mummified and then placed back inside her — except her brain. As with all mummies, this was pulled out through her nose and thrown away because the ancient Egyptians regarded the brain as irrelevant...

Hi Mummy I'm home!, This is London, UK, November 20, 2006.

cf. Channel 4s Codex.

"The Egyptian Tutankhamen exhibition in the United States has yielded $60 million over the past two years," said Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Dr Zahi Hawass.

He added that the exhibition will move from the city of Chicago in February to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He said the exhibition will be later held at several European countries, Japan and finally in Bahrain.

Hawass said the exhibition has an insurance premium of $650 million, the largest.

Tutankhamen exhibition yields $60 million, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, November, 20, 2006.

The Egyptian-French archaeological mission has discovered a Pharaonic cemetery inside the ancient Ramses Temple in Luxor.

The cemetery contains kitchens, ovens and a school for children. Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA) Zahi Hawass said the grand cemetery was not royal but rather public.

Not much information in this press release really. What sort of cemetery contains a school?

Pharaonic cemetery discovered in Luxor, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, November 19, 2006.