Who would have thought the Egyptian exhibition at the Hong Kong Palace Museum would be so popular?
Art and relics from ancient Egypt are fascinating, of course. And the collection of over 200 treasured pieces, from seven major Egyptian museums and an archaeological site, gives us a glimpse into a very different world, reaching back into a mystical time when the ancient Egyptian civilisation flourished.
But who would have thought the exhibition would draw the crowds it did when it opened last month? On November 22, the first Saturday after it opened, the “Ancient Egypt Unveiled: Treasures from Egyptian Museum” exhibition made headlines. “‘Disaster’: Egyptian exhibition at Hong Kong museum descends into chaos” was the headline of the Post’s report of confused visitors queuing for hours and angry people demanding refunds – for which there was also apparently a long queue.
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The museum acted fairly quickly, though probably not fast enough for those who had already spent ages in the wrong queue. By around 6pm, the museum announced that tickets for the day were sold out, asking ticket holders to keep waiting outside the gate for instructions. At around 8pm, it offered ticket holders an additional visit on any day in the next three months. And it also extended opening hours on the weekend.
It was essentially caught scrambling by the unexpected volume of visitors. Museum director Louis Ng Chi-wa has apologised, admitting: “Some of the staff might be inexperienced with handling such crowds, resulting in a poor experience for some visitors.” Some of us who have lived in this city for a long time quietly chuckled at museum visitors’ complaints of unclear directions. Welcome to Hong Kong, where things aren’t as self-explanatory as our authorities would like to believe.
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The museum expected the Egyptian exhibition to be popular, and to attract 700,000 visitors over the nine months of the show. It clearly didn’t expect 16,000 to show up in the first four days. Ng recently revealed that 76,000 people had visited the exhibition in its first four weeks. (In 2024, the museum attracted an average of about 2,500 visitors daily). Local residents accounted for about 40 per cent, with mainland and overseas visitors each taking up about 30 per cent. These are very encouraging numbers, not only for the museum, but for the tourism industry.
