Yesterday
the Dahesh Museum Gift Shop in
Hudson Square played host to a capacity crowd for the debut of Bob Brier’s new
book, Egyptomania. Brier is, of course, the celebrated egyptologist
who has written eight books, including The Murder
of Tutankhamen, and was host of television’s The Great Egyptians and The
Mummy Detective.
Though
an academic with multiple degrees (including actually getting a medical degree to better understand
the underlying cause of death of the mummies he has examined), Brier brings to
his field of expertise an infectious sense of fun and a true sense of
wonder. Rarely have I laughed so much at
a lecture, nor can I remember having been regaled with stories by an expert who
is as much entertainer as academic.
Brier’s
book chronicles our three thousand year obsession with the Land of the
Pharaohs, and provides a wonderful juxtaposition between the learned (his
chronicle of Napoleon’s invasion of
Egypt, complete with a retinue of savants to provides what might be history’s
first ethnographic study) and the commercial, cataloging “mummy” sheet music, Cleopatra cigarettes and mummy movies
featuring everyone from Boris Karloff
to Peter Cushing.
Brier
argues that no ancient civilization compares to Egypt for its romantic hold on
our imagination. He thinks this is a
mixture of our fascination with mummies (here – easily recognizable – are human
beings who walked the earth thousands of years ago); the art of Egyptian hieroglyphics;
and, of course, what he calls “the Indiana Jones effect.” Egypt has inspired exotic adventure fiction
from pens as diverse as Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, Sax Rohmer and H. Rider Haggard – and this touch of
exotica continues in the films of Steven
Spielberg and Stephen Sommers.
Your
correspondent had the pleasure of interviewing Brier at his home in the Bronx,
which is crammed with enough Egyptian artifacts to gladden the heart of Indiana
Jones. That interview, along with a more
detailed review of his book, will follow in a few weeks.
In other
Dahesh news, the country’s premiere museum-without-walls, has taken the
remarkable step of purchasing Frederic,
Lord Leighton’s imposing Star of Bethlehem, to expand the scope of the
current exhibition, Sacred Visions:
Nineteenth-Century Biblical Art from the Dahesh Museum Collection, on view
until February 16, 2014 at the Museum of
Biblical Art. Curators and directors
from each institution immediately agreed to add the painting to the current
installation, as this presented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the
Leighton alongside other like-themed treasures.
The exhibition traces the renewed interest in Biblical myths following
the expansion of biblical archeology and the advent of photography, which
produced travel books with pictures of the Holy Land.
Curator Alia Nour said last night, “We decided
to remove two smaller paintings to make room for this very large one and
started to work on a new label. We deemed it worthwhile to give visitors access
to one of the most powerful biblical works Leighton produced during the 1860s.”
New
Yorkers who have not yet seen the show now have added impetus, and those who
have already seen it an added reason to see it once again. The Museum of Biblical Art is at 1865
Broadway at 61st Street, and admission is free.
For more information, call 212.408.1500.
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