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Canwest News Service
For one woman, seeing King Tut's treasures at the Art Gallery of Ontario on a drizzly afternoon yesterday was the culmination of the wait of a lifetime, one that started with a disappointment all the way back in 1979.
"I couldn't get tickets the first time," said Lucy Coursol of London, Ont., referring to the earlier visit to Toronto of goods taken from the tomb of Ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun. The current exhibition, King Tut: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs, opened to the public on Tuesday. To ensure she could lay eyes on it, Coursol bought tickets online and made the two-hour trip to Toronto with her son Denis, 36.
Coursol deemed the experience worth the drive in the rain. "It was the thrill of a lifetime. I never thought it would be here ever again," she said.
The Coursols were like most of the 20 people polled (highly unscientifically) by the National Post as they left the exhibition yesterday, in that they were generally satisfied with the experience. The ancient Egypt over which Tutankhamun presided was no democracy, but it may have pleased him to know he enjoys a high approval rating among gallerygoers. Of the AGO visitors who spoke to the Post — all but one of them adults, with yesterday being a school day — only three expressed complaints about the exhibition.
The artifacts in particular, such as a golden funerary mask for pharaoh Psusennes I, are crowd-pleasers. Visitors repeatedly expressed wonder at the skill of Ancient Egyptian artisans.
"The sculptures are wonderful, and the fineness of the jewellery. The craftsmanship is unbelieveable," said Robin Leigh, an AGO member who lives in Toronto.
A second mother-and-son duo, Christine and Nic deGroot, tut-tutted over the atmosphere created by details in the show, which include Hollywoodesque music, phony pillars and wall torches.
" There were some very good pieces," Nic deGroot said, though he found the exhibition "a little over-theatrical, perhaps. There's piped-in music in every room."
"I found it very jarring," Christine deGroot agreed.
A retired woman from Mississauga, Ont., who did not wish to give her name, compared the show unfavourably with the 1979 edition, which she also saw, in terms of the scope and quality of artifacts on display. "I expected more splendour," she said — particularly more gold.
Tellingly, no visitors complained of overcrowding. A crowd-control system limiting the show to 250 attendees at a time appears to be working, and people had enough room to manoeuvre comfortably yesterday.
An earlier Tut exhibition in Los Angeles in 2005, organized by the same private company, reportedly attracted a crowd of which 46% of visitors had never before visited the museum that put it on, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Yesterday, however, everyone interviewed who lived in Ontario had already visited the AGO multiple times, including 10-year-old Amelia Meredith (who "thought [the show] was really cool" and "liked all the gold stuff "). Seven had gallery memberships, and only three of 20, all visitors from the United States, were newcomers to the AGO.
Two women, friends from Toronto and nearby Whitby respectively, complained they've never seen a TV commercial for the AGO (the gallery actually does advertise on TV, though sparingly). "They don't let people know. I mean, the zoo is always on the radio advertising," said the woman from Toronto, who did not want her name used in print. "Everyone knows what the zoo has."
The Toronto woman's children will know about the exhibition soon enough: She was on her way to buy tickets for their stockings.
-King Tut: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs runs until April 18, 2010.
