(Some of) My Favourite Museums
This post is in honour of ICOM (International Council of Museums) International Museum Day. The theme for 2025 is ‘The Future of Museums in Rapidly Changing Communities’.
With all my travels and places of work, I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate to have visited some really amazing museums over the years. I would like to share my thoughts on ‘five’ of my favourites.[1]
Bát Tràng Museum, Vietnam
Bát Tràng Museum (2024) [2]
Located near Hanoi in northern Vietnam, this museum has to be one of my all-time top favourites, for the architecture and for the ceramic collection.
The Egyptian Museum in Cairo (EMC), Tahrir Square, Cairo
I have visited this museum several times over the years. The ‘Cairo Museum’ or ‘Tahrir Museum’ (alternate names) always seemed the most authentic to me. It is steeped in history and the old building and missing or mislabeled artifacts built a feeling of mystery that made me feel quite entrenched in the past. This is a very good feeling for an archaeologist. I found myself trying to test my knowledge on artifacts and styles of Ancient Egyptian art in order to interpret the objects around me. Some were very familiar (from my studies) and others made me want to do more research. On past visits you weren’t allowed to take photographs inside so perhaps I need to go again - especially to see how it has changed with some objects having been sent off to the new Grand Egyptian Museum.
Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto [3]
As an archaeology student and ceramic specialist, while at the University of Toronto, I enjoyed visiting this museum and sketching artifacts here. They have an amazingly diverse collection, and always had interesting exhibits. I even attended a few pottery classes here.
Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), Giza
GEM (under construction) - December 2014
I haven’t been to this museum since its partial opening, and hope to go this October when I return to Egypt. During the construction phase of the museum, I was hired as the Security Expert, because of my security and museum background, and because of my previous excavation work in Egypt. I not only worked on the security plan, but also helped the other Egyptologists on development of the curatorial and exhibition plans. I promise to write another post after my next trip.
National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC), Old Cairo
National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC)
old Islamic dye structure in the courtyard of the NMEC (2015)
I visited the NMEC in 2015, before it had many of its galleries fitted out. It was the venue for the first ‘Tutankhamun Conference’ which I attended, while working at the Grand Egyptian Museum. It was newly built and looked like it would be great when finally fully opened. I hope to visit again in the future to see the changes.
[1] Listed in alphabetic order as I couldn’t possibly pick an absolute favourite. This is also not an exhaustive list, but perhaps the beginning of an annual series of posts.
[2] I’ve already written a fairly comprehensive post about the Bát Tràng Museum here: https://www.debborahdonnelly.ca/blog/bat-trang-pottery-museum
[3] All of my photos and sketches are presently in storage.
