Remaking History’s Shelves: SCA's Plan for New Museums

Accessed February 14, 2010 | Egypt Today | by Michael Kaput | This article is an overview of the SCA's ongoing and future plans to develop and restore museums to create better areas for housing the nation's antiquities, which have been in dire need of an appropriate and safe environment to be showcased. Here is an excerpt:

The building that houses the office in charge of the nation’s museums at the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) downtown is grand but half-finished. With some work, it could be truly magnificent. Whether that work gets done anytime soon is anyone’s guess. The same could be said about the SCA’s colossal undertaking to give the country’s staggering collection of artifacts a new showcase.

Flush with ticket revenue from international exhibitions and local tourist sites, the SCA is in the midst of a project that will see 20 new museums covering every governorate, and long-closed favorites re-opening to the public over the next five years. More than just cash cows feeding on tourist dollars, however, the new museums are also hope to reconnect Egyptians with their own heritage, in their own neighborhoods.

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Part of the SCA’s plan is to air out the museum, transferring more than 20 percent of the objects, including the famed royal mummies, to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC) in El Fustat, due to open in two years. King Tutankhamun’s treasures will be moved to the new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) being built at the Giza Plateau, which the Museum Sector head confirms is on schedule to open in five years.

Project Manager Selected for Grand Egyptian Museum

Originally published February 2, 2010 | Yahoo! Finance | An announcement about the selection of a project manager for the construction of the Grand Egyptian Museum, which promises to result in successful development of the future pharaonic museum of iconic proportions. The following is an excerpt:

The Grand Egyptian Museum, which has a total estimated project cost of approximately $550 million, will be the largest and most important Pharaonic museum in the world, the largest museum in Egypt and one of the leading scientific, historical and archaeological study centers on the globe. The museum’s twenty-first century galleries will be located in an iconic and distinctive building located where Cairo meets the desert, abutting the Giza Pyramids world heritage site. The museum, designed by Heneghan Peng Architects, Ove Arup, Buro Happold and others, will cover 3,500 years of ancient Egyptian history and house more than 100,000 artifacts.

"With the selection of a project manager, we have achieved yet another milestone in the development of the Grand Egyptian Museum," said Farouk Hosny, Egypt’s Minister of Culture. "In Hill/EHAF, we have the expertise of a world-class project management team to ensure that this project will be completed successfully," he added.

Egyptian Grand Museum worthy of the Pharoahs

Originally published July 20, 2009 | The National | by Digby Lidstone

The Grand Egyptian Museum is scheduled to open in 2013. "The new museum is one of the best ways of preserving these antiquities and showing them to the people at the same time. Our hope is it will be the greatest museum in the world," said Alaa al Din Shaheen of Cairo University and the Supreme Council of Antiquities.