Exhibition: More re Tutankhamun in Philadelphia

http://tinyurl.com/289mkj (philly.com)

There are so many articles about the Tutankhamun exhibition's move to Philadelphia at the moment (due to open its doors to the public tomorrow) that most of them are duplicating each other. However, this one is slightly different, in that it looks at the exhibition in the context of David Silverman's involvement with it on both occasions (now and in the 1970s), and what sort of impact it has had on the public.

"Back in the 1970s, when Silverman signed on to organize Tut's presentation at the Field, other museums involved in the exhibit wanted to make use of his work as well. 'The National Gallery asked me if I would write all of the text and all of the labels,' Silverman recalled. 'They said they would send somebody out from Washington who was an art educator and he would... expertize it. I'd never heard that word.'
Tut I was a phenomenon. It broke attendance records at every museum. Merchandisers and marketers launched a thousand products. Not the least of the retailers was the Metropolitan Museum of Art itself, which issued the first-ever museum sales catalog, keyed to Tut, and sold high-end jewelry and replicas cast from artifact molds. Product spin-offs hit every market."

See the above page for the full story.