King Tut: Biggest Cock-Tease Ever
When you think of King Tut, what the first thing that comes to mind? The famous golden burial mask. When do you do an image search for King Tut, what do you get? The burial mask. What’s plastered in the King Tut advertisements all of LA? The burial mask. What’s plastered all over LACMA as part of the exhibit? The burial mask. When you visit the exhibit homepage what’s one of the first things you seen? The burial mask. When you click on the gallery link of the exhibit what do you see? The burial mask. What’s NOT in the fucking exhibit? The burial mask. Really, a better name for this exhibit would have been “King Tut’s Knife” as that’s one of the few things of his you get to see. Alternatively, they could call it “The Tomb of Amenhotep II” or “The Coffin of Tjuya.” Both are cool in their own right, but on a King Tut exhibit, you’re expecting, oh, I don’t know, King Tut, maybe!? Originally, I thought it was a great idea how the higher costs of admissions (expected to generate up to $40 million) would be used to construct & improve new museums in Egypt. Great way to use capitalism to support the arts. But this is ridiculous. This is just fraud. These bastards need to either change their marketing or get socked with a class-action law suit. |
July 11th, 2005 at 11:26 am
Honestly, I’m not that surprised. LACMA has done a number of things in the past with their special exhibits that I considered sleazy. For example, they tempted us into membership with offers of tickets to two special exhibits, only to tell us later that they were running at the same time and we got tickets to see both on the same day. With a small child and a combined total of something like 300 paintings and photographs, let me tell you that did not work out so well.
July 11th, 2005 at 1:46 pm
I knew going into the exhibit that King Tut was not fully represented. The Firm hosted a summer intern event and everyone said they were disappointed that Tut was not physically there. In fact some people walked back thru the exhibit b/c they thought they had missed something!
Now, my only rant about my own personal experience, is that we had the TM hook-up, had 4pm reservations, and did not actually get into the building until 5:15pm! Only to wait in more lines once inside and deal with crowds throughout the exhibit. In fact, we had to wait in lines to get from room to room. At on point I sprinted ahead to see how many agonizing rooms were a part of this annoying exhibit! You should know I have a 45 minute to 1 hour attention span at museums.
In the end I felt that all of the antiquities were very interesting but I agree LACMA needs a new marketing campaign.
July 11th, 2005 at 1:52 pm
That sound pretty disappointing. I’m glad I didn’t bother to try and get tickets. I have a fairly short attention span at museums (and elsewhere) myself. Unfortunately I probably miss out on some cool special exhibits because of my aversion to lines. Though in this particular case it sounds as if I didn’t miss much.
July 11th, 2005 at 2:07 pm
I was also disapointed to not see the mask because I missed the first LA exhibit when I was a kid.
But the image used in the advertising and the www.lacma.org and www.kingtut.org web sites is not of the mask. It is of the “Coffinette” that is in one of the last rooms. Compare the images at http://www.kingtut.org/gallery/Gold_67.htm and
http://www.stanford.edu/~wgupta/images/egypt%20-%20king%20tut%20mask.jpg
My biggest complaint is the amount of people you have to contend with. I had a 10AM Saturday time and only waited a few minutes to get in. But I still found the crowds a very large annoyance.
I would suggest getting early AM tickets on a week day if you can swing it.
July 14th, 2005 at 12:15 pm
My wife warned me that the death mask wouldn’t be part of the exhibit, and I didn’t expect his nibs since this is an art museum, not an anthropology museum. Still, I had expected a larger exhibit, though it was plenty large enough for my 5 year old. He enjoyed it, but I don’t think he was left wanting more.
As for the crowding, that seems to be standard for high-profile exhibits at LACMA. The Picasso and Van Gogh exhibits were both that way. The folks with the audio headsets who stand in front of the exhibits staring into space while listening to the narration are especially annoying.
I think it was the Van Gogh that was also lit really poorly (perhaps to minimize fading of the paintings?), to the point where it was possible to completely miss some paintings hidden in dark corners. The rooms for the Tut exhibit were fairly dark, but the items themselves were well lit.
The knife *was* pretty impressive.
August 25th, 2005 at 4:32 pm
I was outraged about the exhibit. It was a total farse, and I hold National Geographic, American Exress and LACMA responsible. The damn ticket was $36 bucks, the train ride up to LA was $50, all to see the mask that was advertised EVERYWHERE! False adveritesment is a crime.
I came out of the exhibit, where they dump you out at the gift shop to buy more King Tut CRAP, of course. Totally confused, I turned around to go back in, as if I had missed the damn thing! A security guard shoots his arm out at me and says “You can’t go back in there!” Stunned I said, “But where is the main thing??” He laughed, drumming up his most matter-of-fact face and said, “That’s national treasure, that ain’t goin’ nowheres.” The guy must have heard the question so many times, and must have said the same thing a million times that day, I just wanted him to spell the word “national” and give me my flippin money back. I will never, ever go to another LACMA exhibit again.