LOS ANGELES - The treasures of King Tut will go on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, but visitors will have to pay a record price of up to $30 to see the Egyptian artifacts.
"Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaoh" will begin a U.S. tour June 16 in Los Angeles, before stopping in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Chicago. But the show will not visit New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which helped organize the first exhibition of the treasures in 1976.
The show includes about 130 Egyptian artifacts, compared to the 55 artifacts that toured the country from 1976 to 1979.
The exhibit will continue through Nov. 15 and tickets will range from $15 to as much as $30 for adult weekend tickets, said Andrea Rich, the Los Angeles museum's president and director. The museum was to make a formal announcement of the tour at a news conference Wednesday.
The "Tut" ticket prices will be set by exhibition's backers Anschutz Entertainment Group, which developed the Staples Center, and Arts and Exhibitions International. Both organizations have been working with National Geographic and Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities to bring the artifacts to the United States.
Part of the exhibition's proceeds will fund construction of a new museum in Cairo and preservation and conservation of archaeological sites in Egypt, said Tim Leiweke, president and chief executive of AEG.
The New York Times reported in Wednesday editions that the Egyptian government could not reach an agreement with the Met, whose board of trustees would not break its policy and charge a separate admission for the exhibit.
Zahi Hawass, head of the Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said Egypt needed to raise money for antiquities such as the Pyramids, the Sphinx and other treasures.
"These monuments will be gone in 100 years if we don't raise the money to restore them," said Hawass.
King Tut ascended to the throne at about age 8 and died around 1323 B.C. at 17. There are speculations that the king might have been killed, because a 1968 X-ray found bone fragments in his skull.
The exhibition, which will include Tutankhamen's diamond crown, his gold coffin and other objects from his tomb, will travel to the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in December 2005 and Chicago's Field Museum in May 2006.
On the Net:
L.A. County Museum of Art: http://www.lacma.org
Zahi Hawass Official Web site: http://www.guardians.net/hawass/
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