WATANI International 19 September 2010
The Romans absorbed many features from ancient Egypt into their own culture, and soon they will be reminded of the glories of Egypt’s past. The official opening in Rome of the Egyptian Academy for Arts was delayed from July until September, when most Italians return from their summer holidays. It will coincide with the inauguration of the city’s Egyptian Museum.
“Refurbishment is complete and the academy building is now a great cultural palace,” Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said. The renovation cost the Egyptian government some EGP20 million and has taken close to five years to complete. With a façade of reflective glass and marble tiles ornamented with relief hieroglyphs, Ashraf Reda, the academy director, has described it as a quantum leap in architecture.
The renovation project, Dr Reda says, involved establishing the first museum for Egyptian monuments in Rome; galleries with the latest lighting; a cinema theatre to seat 200; and renovating the Academy’s guest studios.
Museum items
The academy is described as an ‘ambassador for Arabs’, since it is the only Arab academy among 17 international academies for creativity and arts. It will play an important role in spreading Egyptian culture in Europe, and in Italy in particular. It will help attract more and more tourists by hosting temporary exhibitions that will showcase new pieces on loan from Egypt as well as those already in its collection.
The museum currently houses 201 antiquities registered with the Supreme Council of Antiquities. Sixty-four of these were brought from the Egyptian Museum, including a small shroud of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, two mummies, a statue of King Khafre, a bust of Alexander the Great and another of Pharaoh Akhenaten, as well as coins and other small items.
There are also 40 pieces on loan from the Coptic Museum, among them utensils, vessels, icons, and metallic ware. The Museum of Islamic Art is sending 80 items including glass and textiles. In addition there will be 10 pieces from the Textile Museum, three from the Saqqara Museum, four from Fayoum, two from the Pottery Museum and one from the Dar al-Kuttub (Egypt’s national library). Some pieces will remain for six months and will be taken back to Cairo to be replaced by other pieces.
The academy includes various exhibition galleries for arts and a library housing more than 10,000 books and encyclopaedias for those interested in studying Arab culture.
New sections have been added, including a Modern Art Gallery showing the works of first and second generations of Egyptian artists and an ‘Egyptomania’ room displaying furniture crafted in a pseudo-pharaonic style that belonged to King Farouk.
Unforgettable story
It is now over 80 years since the academy was founded in Rome in 1929, the only Arab and African academy there.
The idea of establishing the Egyptian academy dates back to 1924 when the Egyptian painter Ragheb Ayyad (1892 – 1982), during his stay in Rome, wrote with the support of his colleague Youssef Kamel (1891 – 1971) to the then plenipotentiary minister of the Egyptian embassy, Ahmed Zul-Fuqqar suggesting the establishment of an Egyptian art academy in Rome.
Ayyad and Kamel have an unforgettable story which is to this day circulated among Egyptian artists. They worked out an arrangement which began by persuading the headmasters of the schools at which they taught art to allow them to share jobs. The deal allowed them to support each others’ personally-financed year-long study of art in Rome. Kamel first left Cairo to Rome while Ayyad stayed at home, working as an art teacher on his behalf, sending him remittances from Egypt, and supporting his family at home. Once Kamel’s year was over he came home and reciprocated the arrangement; Ayyad went to Rome while Kamel supported him abroad and his family at home.
News of the two artists’ determination to study abroad quickly spread. The effect on public opinion was such that parliament decided it wise to allocate a sum of some 12,000 EGP for the financing of scholarships abroad. In 1925 the Ministry of Education financed scholarships for Kamel, Ayyad and Mohamed Hassan in Rome, and sent Ahmed Sabri (1895 – 1955) to Paris.
In 1929, the Egyptian Academy was founded, and had its first home in the midst of the Villa Borghese gardens. It later moved to its present premises in the vicinity of Valle Giulia in Rome, where the buildings of the most important foreign academies are located.