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ART: Dallas to host Egyptian treasures next fall in cultural coup

According to the dallasnews.com in what became a tussle of Texas pride, Dallas duked it out with Houston and won, landing the internationally renowned King Tut exhibition, which officials announced Monday will arrive at the Dallas Museum of Art for a seven-month stay, beginning next October.

quot;Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," which pulled in nearly 4 million visitors during a tour of four U.S. cities that ended in Philadelphia late last month, is expected to draw 1 million visitors.

But Mayor Tom Leppert said Monday he hoped the city could double that number. "This is an important day," he said. "It puts Dallas in an important light. It puts us on an international stage."

The mayor said he anticipates no city money being involved for an exhibition that, in the past, has courted controversy because of what critics call its expensive price tag – both for the city hosting the event and those who choose to attend.

He noted, however, that the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau will contribute $2 million toward marketing and promotion, key factors in luring even 1 million visitors through the turnstiles.

"Ramses the Great," a similar exhibition staged at Fair Park in the late 1980s, drew 1.2 million visitors, "so my hope is that the Tut exhibit will draw close to 2 million," Mr. Leppert said. The Tut show will remain in Dallas from Oct. 3, 2008, to May 17, 2009.

DMA director John R. "Jack" Lane said the up-front costs of staging the exhibition are being borne by its promoters, Anschutz Entertainment Group in Los Angeles. "There is a revenue-sharing arrangement with each institution at its local venue," he said. "But the big numbers and the big risks were assumed by AEG."

Asked to assess the total cost, Dr. Lane replied, "I am not privy to that."

This is the first time in a generation that the Tut exhibition of ancient Egyptian treasures has come to America, having toured in the U.S. from 1976 to 1979. This time around, the show is even bigger, since only a few of its 130 artifacts were even seen in its previous incarnation, and many have never before left Egypt, organizers say. The most recent version is also flaunting Super Bowl-like numbers in terms of what it can bring the host city. Organizers estimate its economic impact as being $168 million in Los Angeles and $150 million in Florida.

All of that helped fuel the collective optimism on Monday, when Mr. Leppert and Dr. Lane shared the limelight at a morning news conference, along with Tut's corporate sponsors, Northern Trust and American Airlines.

Flanking the various dignitaries were actors from Eclipse Entertainment dressed as Egyptian "royal guards," who struggled to hold up a large banner heralding the event. Schoolchildren wearing black and gold Pharaoh-like caps formed a parade that had to be moved indoors because of Monday's downpour.

But Dr. Lane said nothing could dampen the city's enthusiasm about landing what he called the landmark exhibition that commemorates Egypt's mysterious boy king, whose uncovered tomb contributed most of the artifacts being shown.

The DMA director was among those who got to see the Tut show during its previous go-round.

It was, he said, "the most breathtaking exhibit I've seen as a young museum person. And now, as a senior museum person, I relish the opportunity of presenting this treasure trove again to the American people. I'm especially excited that it's happening in North Texas."

Dallas apparently got the nod as the first city to host the event on the heels of Los Angeles, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Chicago and Philadelphia because organizers were swayed by the city's ambitious growth in the Arts District and by its logistical prowess, in being a transportation hub because of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, according to Dr. Lane."A lot of American cities wanted to have this," he said. "We made a case that Dallas was the most well-placed city in the heartland of America to present this exhibit," which he said the city began wooing two years ago, with negotiations escalating during the past 15 months.

The most pivotal meeting apparently came in Chicago on May 22.

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