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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 May 1999 Issue No. 430 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 May 1999 Issue No. 430
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Supplement Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Rallying behind the minister
By Youssef Rakha
A Supreme Council for Culture (SCC) meeting held on Monday in the Cairo Opera Complex in Gezira, saw another episode in the saga which began last month with Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni's decision to transport a large part of the contents of the Museum of Islamic Arts in Bab Al-Khalq to the Citadel area. Subsequent statements indicated plans to disseminate the collection of 102,000 artifacts to other venues, including some located in the provinces, on the grounds that all Egyptians should have access to their heritage.
The main justification given for the move, however, relates to the Ministry of Culture's alleged efforts to restore the museum's dilapidated site and save its invaluable articles (more than 90 per cent of which have been in storage) from potentially damaging leakages. Hosni said in April, that the site would be transformed into a state-of-the-art, air-conditioned Islamic architecture museum, retaining only a fraction of its contents, while the adjoining garden would be replaced by a car-park in an effort to protect Fatimid Cairo from pollution and traffic congestion. The bulk of the museum's contents are to be moved to the Public Record Office in the Citadel (a space found inappropriate for antiquities in a 1993 official report), not far from the site of Hosni's large-scale project -- not yet underway -- to build an exclusive hotel in Bab Al-Azab.
Hosni spoke to the People's Assembly last week in response to a complaint filed by five professors and writers with Prosecutor-General Raga'a El-Arabi in an attempt to stop the move. His critics maintained that the relocation had already started and was causing damage to the fragile artefacts, since it was being undertaken haphazardly and observed neither scientific standards nor legal regulations.
The meeting of the various committees of the SCC, headed by Hosni in his capacity as minister, was called to discuss, among other things, the ongoing press campaign to stop the relocation, which has also questioned Hosni's integrity and led to antagonistic sparring between the opposing camps, culminating in the minister labelling his detractors "failures and nobodies."
Gaber Asfour, secretary-general of the SCC, arranged the meeting prior to the opening of the council's new building in the Opera House grounds. The meeting included three publicity screenings produced by the Ministry of Culture which contrasted the run-down state of the Museum of Islamic arts with the beauty and functionality of the recently established Islamic Ceramics Museum (Gezira Art Centre) in Zamalek, and extolled the benefits of the Bab Al-Azab project (a 55-room hotel) which, Hosni explained, will give the whole area a face-lift, bring in hard currency and not damage existing monuments, which are in any case to be incorporated into the proposed tourist complex.
Citing the examples of the Museum of Nubia in Aswan and the Luxor Mummification Museum, as well as a minor museum recently established in Tanta, Hosni insisted that the Ministry of Culture already had sufficient experience of relocation projects, that his detractors were misinformed and dubiously motivated and that the task of involving ordinary people in culture was proving difficult. The Louvre collection, which had been brought to the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum, for example, failed to draw more than 150 people.
However, quite how the policy of fragmenting precious collections in small venues scattered throughout the country would help to solve the problem remained unclear.
Although the main objective of the SCC meeting was to rally support for Hosni, many of the participants expressed concerns over the issues at stake. Artist Helmi El-Touni pointed out that the Ministry of Culture seemed more interested in constructing buildings than disseminating culture, pointing to the deterioration in the film industry and theatre, implying that the ministry's current policies were defeating their own ostensible objectives. Writers Mahmoud Amin El-Alem and Bahaa Taher, as well as critic Salah Fadl, voiced concerns regarding the ministry's response to criticism, and whether it was right for Hosni to so quickly discredit his critics.
How the saga of the Museum of Islamic Arts will end, however, remains unclear. One thing is certain, though: nothing could be further from the quiet tone of the meeting than the seething antagonism which this issue arouses.
