King Tut drew throngs of last-minute visitors to the Denver Art Museum on Sunday, the end of an exhibit that almost tripled museum attendance in the months since it began July 1.
“I was meaning to, meaning to, meaning to, but never quite got there,” Neale Lange, 45, said of his waiting until the last minute to visit the exhibit.
The museum drew 270,000 visitors from July through September, compared with 96,000 during the same period of 2009. From October through December, 290,000 visitors came to the museum, compared to 109,000 in the same period of 2009. The exhibit opened June 29.
“This has brought a lot of new people into the museum,” said DAM spokeswoman Kristy Bassuener.
About 38 percent of those who attended “Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs” during its time in Denver came from out-of-state — the most non-Coloradans to attend any special exhibit the museum has hosted in the past 12 years, Bassuener said.
DAM split the admission proceeds with the show’s organizers, who covered expenses that included loan fees and shipping.
The exhibit is touring under the auspices of the National Geographic Society and Arts and Exhibitions International, an affiliate of AEG — a company owned by Denver businessman Philip Anschutz.
All the objects in the show came from the Cairo Museum, in cooperation with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Lange, a museum member who lives in Greenwood Village, said the exhibit “fell short of my expectations” by presenting information in too random a manner. But “it is beautiful work, and I feel better for having seen it,” he said.
Melissa Schacht, 42, of Lakewood, and her son, Dillon, 11, had seen a different Tut show in New York City that is touring more or less concurrently with the DAM show. “I thought it was very impressive.”
“I think it is neat, how it was all preserved for that long,” said Dillon Schacht.
Jeremiah Heddings, 34, and his wife, Jessica Heddings, came from their home in Colorado Springs to see the show.
“It was our last chance. Our schedules are inconsistent so we had to wait until we had a day off together,” said Jessica Heddings, 32.
The Tut exhibit was only the second time that Jessica had visited the art museum. “I would like to come more,” she said.
This story has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporter’s error, figures associated with out-of-state visitors were wrong.
Crowds follow the boy king
Visitors to the Denver Art Museum nearly tripled during the run of the King Tut exhibit compared with the year before.
2009 2010
Number of visitors July through September
96,000 270,000
Number of visitors October to December
109,000 290,000
Source: Denver Art Museum
