Hoo boy, do I love a museum. A good museum combines three of my favorite things: learning, beauty, and good lighting. Some museums are so perfect they get their own blog post.* Some museums are such a mix they get combined into one post.**
We hit a bunch of museums in Cairo over a few different days. There is a little something for every taste and I may have finally found my true calling.***
Egyptian Museum
If you do one thing in Cairo, you go to the pyramids. If you do two things, you go to the Egyptian Museum. This museum houses all the antiquities that have been dug up from the now-empty tombs of the Pharaohs.****
There is actually so much stuff in there, they haven't unpacked it all.
You can see entire display cases crammed full of objects that aren't labeled or lit or even assumed to be viewed. The sheer volume of "stuff" was incredible. No wonder so many art museums have an "Ancient Egypt" section! They are begging you to take some of it off their hands.
All that aside, you can see the contents of King Tut's tomb*****, incredible statues built to giant scale, and an in-your-face display of the abundance of gold and semi-precious stones available in Egypt's good ol' days.******
Museum of Modern Egyptian Art
This museum title included several of my favorite words so I was all in. We went there first thing in the just-after-lunch-morning to discover it doesn't open until after five. We did return several hours later to discover a lovely, though small, collection of modern paintings and sculptures. They were presented without comment and without much organization but featured one of the highest ratios of "paintings I enjoyed to total paintings" I've seen in a museum. No pictures were allowed inside and the building wasn't too much to see, so I give you this picture of the Cairo Opera House that was located directly across from the museum.*******
Ceramic Art Museum
We went, we saw, we were informed it was closed for a year's worth of renovation. I did my research before we left the hotel that day and can report that this blog is the only website that will give you this information. They do have a gallery opening in a month. The security guards are lovely people.
Museum of Islamic Arts
Jackpot!!! We love Islamic art and specifically their textiles, ceramics, and artistic use of geometrics and calligraphy. Pictures were not allowed inside.******** Here are a few of my favorites from the exhibit!
National Museum of Egyptian Civilization
This museum was not on our original list but peaked our interest after our friend Laura********* pointed it out. The museum is a project with UNESCO and just opened to the public. It is so new that when we got a taxi from the hotel, a concierge was called in to confirm it was a real place.********** It is also so new that they are still building it while a portion is open free to the public.
The section currently open was small but worth it. It featured pottery, textiles, and jewelry from different time periods and tribes of Egypt. The building itself was super cool and everything was perfectly displayed.***********
Coptic Museum
Our last museum stop was in Old Cairo. We wandered around the various churches and ended in the Coptic Museum.
We were there at the end of the day and only had about fifteen minutes before they closed. We cruised through and saw some of the highlights.
At some point I just started taking pictures of patterns...
The week's museums have helped me brainstorm my new dream job: Museum Consultant. For a small fee,************ museums can hire me to visit their museum and give notes on improving the overall experience. This will include: proofreading all English translations for spelling and grammatical errors, advice on layout and display, and a recommendation on gift shop items.************* Not a curator but a little more valuable than a cranky old lady with a clipboard and comment cards.**************
If any museums are interested, please contact me here!
-KT
**That's this one. #obvs
***Could have happened a few degrees ago...
****And that aren't in various other museums around the world. Particularly the British Museum. Kudos, Colonialism, I see what you did there.
*****You'll have to actually go there and see it since pictures were not allowed AND this was a rule that was enforced.
******When I was a pharaoh we had to walk uphill in the sand to build the pyramids! Both ways!! (shakes cane covered in lapis lazuli)
*******Again, actually enforced.
********Not a printed rule that we could find and it was eventually enforced after we had been there for quite some time.
*********#TOTY
**********Never you mind that this lil' lady had the address ready (in Arabic) and a map to the location. I guess it is common for tourists to go to invented museums??
***********I'm looking at you, Egyptian Museum.
************No pictures were allowed inside.
*************Salary, room and board, travel expenses
**************The gift shop is the holy grail of any museum. Nothing is worse than finally getting there and finding nothing.
***************Though that sounds good, too.
**%|£~*]\****I definitely lost track of the asterisks in this one. Sorry, devoted/OCD readers.
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