The King Tut exhibit opened June 16 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and moves to the Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Art in December. It is the Florida residency where the Arts Council of Moore County’s “King Tut Revisited” ARTour plans to view this latest, blockbuster exhibit, Jan. 16-19.
As Tut fans may recall, King Tut was born about 1343 B.C. and came to the throne of Egypt at age 9 or 10. He didn’t last long and died at about age 19, under mysterious circumstances, and was entombed with a relatively modest stash of precious objects for his use in the afterlife. But unlike all other pharaohs’ last resting places, Tut’s tomb was left mostly intact until 1922, when British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered it.
A record 8 million people saw the first exhibit, which featured 55 objects, when it toured seven U.S. cities. The new Tut exhibit is larger, with nearly 130 objects including 70 from other pharaohs’ tombs, and has a broader story to tell. It’s not just about Tut but also about the splendor of the Pharaonic lifestyle and the complicated culture of ancient Egypt.
The goal of the current exhibit’s organizers is to produce a once-in-a-lifetime experience that will be talked about for the next 25 years. Among the most eagerly anticipated features are new CT scans and modern forensic techniques that helped scientists and artists reconstruct what the teenage king might have looked like. So, along with Tut’s familiar splendid coffin masks, visitors will get to see a bust of the boy himself, unmasked. All in all, the new exhibit is touted to be richer and deeper than the first one, with updated scholarship, better exhibit technology, and more interactive features.
In addition to the King Tut exhibit, this winter, get-away ARTour also includes an architectural walking tour of Miami’s South Beach and a tour of Villa Vizcaya, the extravagant wintertime retreat of Chicago industrialist, James Deering. Villa Vizcaya, Italian Renaissance in style, was completed in 1916 and is so authentic that visitors are convinced that it has been standing there overlooking Biscayne Bay for at least 400 years.
Accommodations are scheduled at one of Ft. Lauderdale’s oldest jewels, the Riverside Hotel. The Riverside has been transformed recently into the city’s newest gem with an expansion and renovation.
The cost of “King Tut Revisited” is $1,275, double occupancy, and $1,575, single occupancy. The price includes round-trip airfare, airport transfers, three nights’ hotel accommodations, three breakfasts, two dinners, and one lunch in Coconut Grove, and touring entry fees.
For more information about “King Tut Revisited,” call the Arts Council at 910-692-4356.
