Sunday, December 05, 2010

Exhibition: Replica Tutankhamun

Manchester Confidential (Nonathan Schofield)

I took two ten year olds to King Tut and they loved it.

I loved it.

Close to the Trafford Centre, in an old Argos warehouse now called the Museum of Museums is a vast travelling show named ‘Tutankhamun, his tomb and treasures’.

Given its location away from the established city galleries with their professional and trained curatorial staff, I confess I was worried about what I might find. The name Museum of Museums is plain silly for starters - shouldn’t the Museum of Museums have other museums in it?

Did the choice of name for the venue mean the exhibition would be a shockingly poor, camp slice of history-lite guff?

Not at all.

Instead the boys and I enjoyed a cleverly delivered reconstruction of the finding of Tut back in 1922 by adventurer Howard Carter and his financial backer Lord Carnarvon.

Particularly good were a series of spectacular and dramatically lit tableaux underpinned by a very good audio that kept the ten year olds listening. The audio managed this by not talking down to the boys, but describing the scenes unfolding in front of them in an engagingly straightforward manner.

The exhibition is also covered by Ann Wuyts on Heritage Key, with a link to a video on You Tube.

The exhibition runs until late February 2011. More information is available from the exhibtion's website.

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