But does this mean that in future the British Museum will be in competition with big business? This could have a significant effect on its own budgets (blockbuster shows, for which it charges, help to draw people into other parts of the museum and to spend money in its shops). It would also, I think, be bad news for the public: tickets for the British Museum's current blockbuster, The First Emperor － China's Terracotta Army, admittedly a much smaller show than Tutankhamun, are the equivalent of US$25; those for King Tut are over US$30 for an adult, rising to over US$40 on weekends. "We're realistic. There will be an element of competition but it won't be destructive."
AEI is equally keen to avoid talking of competition. After my return from Philadelphia, I meet Mark Lach, senior vice president of the company and the designer of its shows. "We don't want to － or think we can － replace the global museums," he says. "We know that we can't survive as a business unless our relationship with the museums is a good one, and we are very sensitive to that relationship." Lach shows me around the O2 bubble and it's a bit like being backstage at, say, a Rolling Stones tour: lighting rigs, scaffolding, lots of big, black boxes.
Oh well. See the exhibition, you can － and you should, if you can bear the crowds, the noise, the general confusion. If you can be sufficiently Zen about it, the contents of King Tutankhamun's remarkable grave may still work their magic on you and "annihilate," as Carter puts it, the passing of 3,000 years with their "intimate details." And if they don't, well, you can always buy a King Tut headdress, for the amusement of all your friends.
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