On May 24, 2012, the Tutankhamun: The Golden King and The Great Pharaohs exhibit opens at the Pacific Science Center, but you can start braving the mummy’s curse right now, by purchasing tickets in advance. General public admission ranges from $20.50 (ages 3 to 5) to $32.50 (adult). The Center is selling “timed” tickets, good for a specific time period on a specific day, to keep lines from becoming overwhelming.
In theory, this is your last chance to Tut it up without buying airfare to Egypt. This exhibit’s world tour ends in Seattle; after this, the artifacts take up their new home in the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza. Seattle to Egypt airfare right now runs more than $1,000. That $32.50 ticket looks good in comparison, doesn’t it? Even so, the touring exhibit has raised over $100 million so far to fund Egyptian museums.
Over at Crosscut, Knute Berger (aka Mossback) remembers Tut ’62 and Tut ’78: “Needle and Center attendance figures during the Tut year were their biggest since the fair. The Needle featured a Tut menu and a ‘Tut Tut’ cocktail.” (Canon, start your mixing engines.)
Ensconced at the Pacific Science Center, the exhibit organized by National Geographic and Arts & Exhibitions International plays up the archeological discovery side, and seeks to mimic moving through a shadowy tomb-like space, coming “face to face” with sarcophagi and statues. There will be both King Tut’s tomb decor–“jewelry, furniture and ceremonial items, as well as the boy king’s golden sandals”–and finds from other sites. Promises the Center, you’ll see “more than twice the number of artifacts than the original Tut exhibit that toured in the 1970s.”
The New York Times says previous Tutters “will be amazed again,” partly because:
…the gilded eloquence of the objects discovered in Tut’s tomb in 1922 — fewer than half of the objects here are from that cache — can almost be overshadowed by earlier, more earthen artistry: the sensuously carved swimming woman from the 14th century B.C., serving as the handle of a spoon for unguents; the poised balance of a black panther from a century earlier; or the shapely wooden paws on which a 15th-century B.C. princess’s chair is mounted.
Just when you thought they were going to leave out history’s most famous archeologist, Dr. Indiana Jones, you learn that for $6 ($5 for members), you get an audio guide narrated by Harrison Ford. For an additional cost, you can come face to towering screen with the IMAX films Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs and Mysteries of Egypt.
