Bass Museum of Art Egyptian Gallery
The Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach has created a magnificent new gallery that allows visitors to experience the ancient Egyptian world in a way no other Florida museum can. The Bass Museum’s Egyptian Gallery offers a look at one of the world’s oldest and most mysterious civilizations with surviving objects including an Egyptian sarcophagus and mummy.
The opening celebration begins April 29th and runs through the first year the gallery is open. The museum has a series of public programs to advance the basic understanding of customs and objects associated with Ancient Egypt.
The Egyptian Gallery will be permanently housed in a 460 sq. ft. first floor gallery centrally located and close to the museum’s entrance. The gallery will showcase the sarcophagi, mummy and thirteen objects of Egyptian antiquity on long-term loan from the Brooklyn Museum, Lowe Art Museum and Private Collections. These objects are roughly from the same period as the Bass sarcophagi and provide a representative sampling of what would typically have been placed inside the tomb to assist the dead in transitioning to the afterlife.
This project was conceived when the Bass Museum’s Executive Director and Chief Curator, Silvia Karman Cubiñá, identified a Polychrome Wood Inner Sarcophagus and Mummy from 25th or 26th Dynasty (808 – 518 B.C.) in the museum’s collection. “With the opening of the Egyptian Gallery, the Bass Museum will appeal to a wide audience of art, culture, archeology and history lovers; children and adults alike. It will serve as the place in Miami to experience a long history of object-making and what these objects say about humankind from 700 B.C. through the present,” said Karman Cubiñá.
Bass Museum of Art Egyptian Gallery
The museum’s Egyptian Gallery will be overseen by Dr. Edward Bleiberg, Curator of Egyptian, Classical and Ancient Middle Eastern Art at the Brooklyn Museum who is Consulting Curator of the project and will research and interpret the vast hieroglyphic paintings on the surface of the Sarcophagus.
Like most of the surviving Egyptian mummies, the Bass mummy is destined to remain shrouded in mystery. But it is this very type of ancient mystery that continues to intrigue Egyptian art enthusiasts throughout the world.
MORE INFORMATION:
Membership required for Night at the Museum opening preview event on April 29th, gallery opens to the public April 30th.
Bass Museum of Art
2121 Park Avenue (in Collins Park)
Miami Beach, Florida 33139
T: 305.673.7530
www.bassmuseum.org
Admission
$8 general admission/ $6 senior adults & students. Free for members and children under 6. Group discounts available.
Museum Hours and Docent Tours:
Wednesday-Sunday 12-5pm. Docent tours by appointment. Free with museum admission. To schedule a group tour call 305.673.7530 x 9-1016.