KEY Milwaukee - Cover Story

Spectacular Egyptian exhibit moves
Museum into national spotlight

“THE QUEST for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt,” one of the world’s most sought-after touring exhibits, is now delighting visitors to the Milwaukee Public Museum and may mean more to the city of Milwaukee than any exhibit in the Museum’s 121-year history.

“For the Museum, it’s a new day,” said President and CEO Michael D. Stafford in an interview as the finishing touches were being put on the exhibit. “This should take us from being viewed as a local museum to the regional and national powerhouse that we have become.”

“The Quest for Immortality” came to Milwaukee with the support of the Northwestern Mutual Foundation and is expected to attract more than 220,000 visitors from at least seven states. Organized by United Exhibits Group, Copenhagen, and National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in association with the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo, the exhibit drew rave reviews in Washington, Boston, Fort Worth and New Orleans.

The exhibit opened March 28 and continues through Aug. 8. It represents the largest collection of artifacts ever to travel to North America, with twice as many pieces as the 1977 “Treasures of Tutankhamun” exhibit in Chicago.

“This is unlike any traveling exhibition we’ve ever hosted,” commented Carter Lupton, Museum curator of ancient history. In addition to coping with unprecedented security and significant gallery reconstruction, Lupton and the Museum staff adjusted and enhanced the exhibit to give it a look and feel exclusive to the Museum.

The result of Lupton’s efforts has been to create an experience that literally transports visitors back more than 2,000 years to Egypt’s New Kingdom. Included among the art and funerary objects are massive stone carvings of gods and pharaohs, painted coffins, gold death masks, jewelry and canopic jars that once held internal organs. Some pieces like “Osiris Resurrecting” have never been seen outside of Egypt.

Adding to the understanding of the exhibit is the Antenna X-Plorer audio tour with a narrative by Academy Award-winning actor Jeremy Irons. The audio tour has commentary by leading Egyptologists and re-created period music that sets an authentic Egyptian ambiance. Also at the center of the exhibit is an enlightening video presentation that often leads visitors to return to re-examine specific pieces.

The last stop in the exhibit is a full-scale re-creation of Pharaoh Thutmose III’s burial chamber with the sacred hieroglyphic text of spells and instructions for gaining eternal life painted on the walls. Designed to mirror both the universe and the path of the sun’s daily voyage across the sky, the oval-shaped room is dramatically lit, replicating its actual appearance in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.

Tickets to “The Quest for Immortality” are issued on a timed-entry basis. Admission is $18.50 for adults (16-61); $17.50 for seniors (62+) and $11.50 for children (3-15) and includes general admission to the Museum, as well as the audio tour. The Museum at 800 W. Wells St. in the heart of downtown Milwaukee is open from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily and will extend hours until 9 p.m. the first Thursday of each month during the run of the exhibit. The Museum also will be open until 9 p.m. Friday Aug. 6. During the extended evening hours, the Museum’s first-floor café will offer a variety of Mediterranean cuisine, wine and beer from 5-8 p.m.

To complete the experience of a visit to ancient Egypt, the Museum’s Humphrey IMAX Dome Theater will be showing “Mysteries of Egypt,” which explores the religious beliefs and architectural wonders of ancient Egypt and relives Howard Carter’s 1922 discovery of King Tut’s tomb, perhaps the most famous find in archaeological history.

KEY Milwaukee is distributed monthly in hotels, motels, visitor's centers, corporations and retail stores in Southeastern Wisconsin and on the Internet at www.keymilwaukee.com. It is a KEY Magazine, licensed by KEY Magazines, Inc.

KEY Milwaukee makes every effort to maintain the accuracy of the information provided in the monthly magazine and website, but assumes no responsibility for errors, changes and omissions.

This site designed, maintained and hosted for KEY Milwaukee by

...when it's time to establish an Internet presence.