King Tut Two Cents
The flyer for the King Tut show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art came in the mail last week. I have been wondering when it would come ever since I renewed my membership through a LACMA membership representative about a couple of weeks back. I must say that I have been irked by LACMA's frequent rental of its galleries to these blockbuster shows. Since 2003, I believe there were something like four special ticketing events. This means that instead of paying the normal charge for the museum admissions, one has to pay a higher price to see these "wonderful, special shows". Now we have the King Tut Two show:
The Egyptian government need hundreds of millions of dollars in order to build a new museum near the Pyramids for their archeological finds. A private, for-profit company has stepped in and proposed an internationa tour of the Tutankhamun artifacts, in hopes of repeating the huge success of the first King Tut show, which gave birth to the very phenomena of the museum blockbuster. [from Edward Goldman's Art Talk]
It is all fine and good for the government of Egypt to want to fundraise its project with the showing of the Tutankamun artifacts. It is absurdly rediculous to be asking the prices that they are.
And unlike their previous blockbuster shows of the past couple of years, LACMA does not allow its memberships to view the exhibition free of charge [two tickets per member], unless one is a patron level card holder.So while I would really like to go see the show [and bring someone who might be interested in seeing this show as I have in the past with other LACMA blockbusters], I will have to think twice whether shelling out twenty dollars [which is better than the thirty for the general audience] is feasible.
One thing that LACMA and the Egyptian governement will definitely miss out with their exorbitant admission price is the fact that the very audience they would like to draw to the show, may be turning away in numbers, for the possibility of not being able to afford the tickets.
Tutankanmun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs
June 16 - Novemeber 15, 2005
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Telephone: (213) 623-4200
1 comments:
LACMA members might also be a wee bit concerned about values. In today's LA TIMES (admittedly not the most trustworthy of sources, but nevertheless) - 16 June 2005 - a story about the exhibitions quotes the following sources:
Tim Leiweke, president of AEG;
Carol A. Redmount and Willeke Wendrich, academics commenting on the "mummy factor"; David Silverman, national curator of unidentified affiliation; Chris Hansen, LACMA chief marketing officer; Brian Harris, sales at Art Exhibitions International.
Since the main objective here seems to be financial, LACMA might take a hint and fire its seemingly irrelevant curators and sell off the permanent collection. Museums run by a CMO (no kidding, chief marketing officer!) will surely be more profitable.
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