The organizer of the new U.S. exhibit displaying gilded tomb treasures from Egypt's King Tutankhamun paid $4 million in premiums to protect the priceless artifacts.
The American exhibit began June 16 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and will later visit museums in Fort Lauderdale, Chicago and Philadelphia. The 27-month tour involves 131 ancient artifacts, including the "royal diadem," the gold crown discovered encircling the head of the king's mummified body, and a canopic coffinette that contained the king's mummified internal organs.
This is the second time the King Tut treasures are touring the United States. In their first visit, during the late-1970s, the exhibit prompted King Tut-mania, creating new hairstyles, dance numbers and a hit song, "King Tut," by comedian Steve Martin that sold more than a million copies.
The organizer of the current U.S. exhibit is Arts and Exhibitions International, based in Aurora, Ohio. The firm's president, John Norman, told National Underwriter that his company was solely responsible for paying the exhibit's $4 million insurance cost. Mr. Norman's company, which is project-managing the entire exhibit, will split the tour profits with participating U.S. museums.
Mr. Norman said that while the artifacts are "priceless," they were nonetheless priced at $650 million for insurance purposes. The insurance coverage cost Mr. Norman $1 million for each of the four U.S. cities the artifacts are visiting and protects Mr. Norman from possible damages during transportation as well as theft, he said.
"You can sit all day and come up with a million different scenarios in which artifacts could be damaged," Mr. Norman said. "The risk of damage during transportation is probably the most obvious, and there is always the danger from theft. Artifacts are insured during every single point in their U.S. exhibit."
Mr. Norman said the exposure is spread among many major insurance carriers, including Lloyd's of London, "because no single carrier wants to have a $650 million potential loss on their books."
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