Ponder 4,000 years of art at Egyptian exhibit debut

A limestone sphinx with the head of a pharaoh and the body of a lion, a human-size lid from the mummy case of Hor-Em-Akhet, a large red granite torso of Ramses the Great – you might think you've walked onto a Hollywood set for the next "Mummy" movie.

But really, you've just entered the newest exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg.

Called "Ancient Egypt – Art and Magic: Treasures from the Gandur Arts Foundation," the exhibit features 101 striking antiquities like those above. The exhibit also includes a carved ram's head, a bronze mirror, papyrus fragments featuring hieroglyphics, temple reliefs and life-sized coffins – all of which tell a story about ancient Egypt that can't be told with words alone.

"It's the first time these objects have been seen in America," said museum spokesman David Connelly.

The exhibit's theme — art and magic — explores the decorative, or artistic, as well as the symbolic, or magical, meaning of 4,000 years of Egyptian art.

"The works in the exhibit span the entire period of Pharaonic Egypt, from the pre-dynastic period all the way up to the Polemic period, roughly from 4000 to 30 B.C.," explained Dr. Robert Steven Bianchi, the exhibit's guest curator and the curator for the antiquities division of the Foundation Gandur, from which all the works came.

One of the world's foremost Egyptologists, with more than 60 TV appearances, nearly 300 journal articles and more than 50 books to his credit, the unassuming Bianchi prefers to be called "Dr. Bob," because "That's what people call me all around the world," he said during a telephone interview from Geneva.

"We're looking at the entire object in terms of how it functioned in elite Egyptian society of the time, which represented maybe 10 percent of the population," Dr. Bob said. "I went out of my way to choose aesthetic, superior works of art."

Dr. Bob's selections were based on strict criteria developed by him in cooperation with the museum, criteria that had to do with the quality of the piece and its ability to tell a story.

"What we're explaining is how the objects functioned in ancient Egypt, how they connected people with the natural world and the divine world," said museum director Kent Lydecker.

When pressed to choose a favorite among the lot, Lydecker selected the oversized Torso of Ramses II.

"That's really cool," he said. "It's stone and yet it somehow connotes the force of personality. When we're in the presence of that, we're in the presence of the man who was the pharaoh."

The exhibit is set up in five galleries of the museum which are ordered purposely to explain the ideas of function, art and magic. Wall texts in each gallery and individual labels with each object bring the ancient culture to life.

The exhibit offers a rare opportunity for the Tampa Bay community.

"It's comprehensive of all the eras and it's a first for the Tampa Bay area," Lydecker said. "Art museums have a role to bring in extraordinary exhibitions. It's an important contribution to education."