Tutankhamun secrets, treasures among Palace Museum's dazzlers

Wallis Wang

The Hong Kong Palace Museum hopes to attract 600,000 visitors when 250 ancient Egyptian treasures are showcased later this year as it drums up interest in seven new exhibitions.

The museum will also present its own collections of ancient Chinese gold in the first-ever traveling exhibition at the Capital Museum in Beijing in November.

HKPM yesterday unveiled its plans for the year, which includes four new special and three new thematic exhibitions covering various subjects such as food culture in China, Qing dynasty military collection from the Palace Museum in Beijing, and ancient world civilizations.

A major exhibition, "Tutankhamun and the Secrets of Saqqara," will open in November and run for nine months until August next year at the museum's Gallery 9.

"This will be the largest and most comprehensive of ancient Egyptian treasures in Hong Kong in recent decades, featuring nearly 250 exquisite objects from seven important institutions in Egypt, including the Egyptian Museum and Luxor Museum," HKPM said.

The exhibition will also highlight new archeological discoveries from the large tombs at Saqqara near Cairo, including statues, coffins and animal mummies.

The museum said visitors will also be able to learn about the life of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun.

Museum director Louis Ng Chi-wa said the exhibition has been prepared since June last year and was first held in Shanghai.

The most famous exhibits are to be selected and presented in Hong Kong and are expected to attract some 600,000 visitors, Ng said.

He also revealed that the number of visitors to HKPM reached one million in 2024, which was lower than 1.2 million in 2023. However the proportion of nonlocal tourists among all visitors increased to 73 percent from 55 percent.

Most of the nonlocals were from the mainland, but the museum also recorded a rise in the number of Indonesian and Thai visitors, he said.

Ng said HKPM will step up cooperation with the tourism sector in the future and enhance promotion to develop the museum as a "must-go" destination.

Kicking off the new thematic exhibitions: "The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: The Art of Armaments - Qing Dynasty Military Collection from The Palace Museum" will start on January 22.

The exhibition features nearly 190 military artifacts from HKPM and will showcase the military culture of the Qing dynasty and weapon-making techniques.

The museum will also stage the first major Islamic art exhibition in Hong Kong from June to October, presenting around 100 carpets, ceramics, metalwork, manuscripts and jades from Iran, Turkey and India.

Between August and February next year, it will hold a large-scale exhibition of the artistic achievements of the Golden Age of the Mughal Empire on the Indian subcontinent.

Visitors will able to see some 110 artworks from the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in the United Kingdom and most of them have never been exhibited, the museum said.

In November, HKPM will launch its first roving exhibition to Beijing with the Mengdiexuan Collection of ancient Chinese gold that had been donated to it.

wallis.wang@singtaonewscorp.com