PAINTING TO BENEFIT EGYPTOLOGY

Every artist dreams of having a painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Bill Needle's "Treasures of Tutankhamen" will be there May 17, if only for a day.

A print of the painting will be auctioned off at a gala at the museum. Proceeds will go to the American Research Center in Egypt.

Needle, an Egyptologist and former art history professor at Southeast, was at a conference in Los Angeles earlier this week when he was asked to donate an auction item. His print was accepted for inclusion in the auction.

"I never dreamed that would happen, and I was thrilled to find out," Needle said. "It really is a great honor."

Needle made only 90 prints of the painting about 20 years ago. "I didn't realize most artists have 900 or 1,500," he said.

About 20 of the prints are still in his possession, along with the original acrylic painting.

The auction will be held near the three-story Temple of Dendura, which resides inside the museum. The 4,500-year-old temple was brought from Egypt at a cost of $10 million.

Today, the museum is the primary repository for King Tut artifacts in America. Tutankhamen's tomb yielded the greatest treasures of any excavated thus far.

Egypt's famed Valley of the Kings holds 80 tombs, but only 60 have been excavated. "The others are waiting for people to do that," Needle says.

Most of the tombs of the famous kings and queens have been excavated. King Tut became so popular that at one time 6,000 tourists a day paraded through the small tomb to see the body.

"Their breathing was causing the paint to crumble from the walls," Needle says.

The tomb was closed for 3 1/2 years, and a glass wall was erected so tourists could see but not damage the tomb.

ARCE hopes to raise about $50,000 to fund a number of other preservation and restoration projects in Cairo. Part of the proceeds will be used by ARCE to pay for air conditioning in a room at the Cairo Museum. The room will be used to display gold jewelry never seen before.

"For an American group to come in and do that is a very fine thing," said Needle.

The money also will go toward the preservation and restoration of the tomb of Queen Nefertari, wife of Ramses II.

Another project involves preserving and restoring Christian paintings inside St. Anthony's monastery in Cairo.