February 10, 2010

By Sheldon S. Shafer - The Courier-Journal

A King Tut exhibit featuring primarily reproduced Egyptian artifacts is booked for March 9 to Aug. 29 at the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage in western Louisville, a showing that the center hopes will generate both badly needed revenue and exposure.

“It will let people know we are here,” said Rita Phillips, interim operations manager for the center, which has been in the planning stages for more than a decade and is finally approaching reality.

The traveling exhibit will be the first effort of the center, which has developed in fits and starts and has had to overcome financial problems. The major renovation of the old trolley barn complex on Muhammad Ali Boulevard in the Russell neighborhood is finally finished. The city recently gave the key to the property to the foundation that sponsors the heritage center.

A large tractor-trailer truck hauled the King Tut items in from an Ohio warehouse over the weekend. They were unloaded Monday into the center. The items were heavily packaged for protection.

A black-tie fundraiser to benefit the center is planned Feb. 26 at the site, with attendees getting a preview of the Tut exhibit. Tickets are $150 per person and corporate tables are available.

The foundation is seeking to raise about $5million, including funds to finish the interior, to develop permanent exhibits and to pay off debt.

Phillips said the best hope is to have the center's permanent exhibits, which will focus on achievements of African Americans from Kentucky and Louisville since the Civil War, open in 2011. Several other traveling exhibits are expected to occupy the center after the Tut exhibit leaves and before the permanent exhibits open, officials said.

The King Tut exhibit, titled “Tutankhamun: Wonderful Things From the Pharaoh's Tomb,” is owned by Alberto Acosta. His company, the International Museum Institute of New York, is based in Syracuse. It also owns exhibits featuring: dinosaurs; Lucy, the earliest known human skeleton; and separate collections of ancient Grecian vases, African masks and NASA photographs. Acosta said he commissioned many of the exhibit pieces, including nearly all the Tut items, to be manufactured as reproductions.

Acosta, who is looking for a city that could permanently house all of the exhibits at one location, said in an interview while unpacking the Tut collection Monday that the pharaoh exhibit is 12 years old and features 125 artifacts. Three items are authentic — necklaces believed to be around 3,000 years old.

Acosta predicted that the exhibit in Louisville will draw about 10,000 people a month.

His King Tut exhibit has been shown in more than 20 cities, including most recently for eight months at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. The largest turnout was 113,000 people, who saw the exhibit at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia in 2006, Acosta said.

Acosta said many of the authentic ancient artifacts are so fragile that they no longer are allowed to travel by the Egyptian government. Acosta's Tut exhibit includes reproductions of a wrapped Tut mummy, funerary mask, chariot, bed, throne, jewelry, mummy case and several shrines attributed to Tut.

The exhibit will have the items dispersed in five viewing chambers and will include a musical soundtrack and extensive text outlining the story of the “Boy King” and his reign.

Christie McCravy, the heritage center foundation board chairwoman, said about $50,000 from a $75,000 gift from E.On U.S. is financing the Tut exhibit here.

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