Exhibition: To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum has organized an exhibition of 107 objects from its world-renowned holdings of ancient Egyptian art that will go on a nationwide tour beginning in the summer of 2008 and conclude in the fall of 2011.

The presentation, titled To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum, is slated to travel to more than ten venues.

One of the primary cultural tenets through thousands of years of ancient Egyptian civilization was a belief in the afterlife and the view that death was an enemy that could be vanquished. To Live Forever includes objects that illustrate a range of strategies the ancient Egyptians developed to defeat death. It explores mummification and the rituals performed in the tomb to assist the deceased in defying death, as well as examining what the Egyptians believed they would find in the next world.

The exhibition contrasts how the rich and the poor prepared for the hereafter. The economics of the funeral are examined, including how the poor tried to imitate the costly appearance of the grave goods of the rich in order to ensure a better place in the afterlife. . . .

Among the venues to which the exhibition will tour are the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the John and Mable Ringling Museum, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Chrysler Museum of Art, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Joslyn Art Museum, the Norton Museum of Art, and the Frist Center for Visual Arts, with additional venues to be announced.