A 2400-YEAR-OLD Egyptian mummy mask has brought good luck to an eight-year-old Brisbane boy, who is now the proud owner of a valuable contemporary artwork.
James Hudson won a limited edition Alick Tipoti print valued at $800, after nominating a life-size, brightly coloured Egyptian mummy mask in the Vote for Your Favourite Treasure competition at the University of Queensland’s Centenary Celebration Day.
As required by the competition, James visited all five UQ Museums: the Art Museum, the Anthropology Museum, the Fryer Library, the Physics Museum and the Antiquities Museum on the day, and had his special card stamped in each location.
The entries were collated in the days after the Celebration Day — first, to decide the most popular treasure, and then to draw the winning entry from the votes for that treasure.
The mummy mask dates from the Ptolemaic period – 300 to 30 BC – and is on permanent display in the RD Milns Antiquities Museum, which is open to the public. There is no entry charge for the museum, on Level 3 of the Michie Building at the UQ St Lucia campus.
The Treasure competition was held on UQ’s April 18 Centenary Celebration Day, where thousands of visitors visited the St Lucia campus to enjoy music, food, exhibitions, performances, tours, a literary festival and a dusk “light spectacle” to help celebrate the university’s 100th birthday.
UQ Art Museum director Nick Mitzevich presented James with his framed print, watched on by acting Antiquities Museum director Dr Amelia Brown, who has recently arrived from Princeton University in the US to teach ancient history and classics at UQ.
Mr Mitzevich said Tipoti — a printmaker from Torres Strait — was a young, contemporary artist whose work had been exhibited in Berlin and London. He had become one of Australia’s most collectable artists.
Tipoti’s pictures typically told traditional warrior legends from the Torres Strait, through starkly contrasting and visually dense black-and-white linocut prints.
James, who is in Grade 4 at Ithaca Creek State School at Bardon, said he really enjoyed the Antiquities Museum, and chose the Egyptian mask as his favourite treasure “because it looked so interesting, and was really old”.
His parents are both UQ alumni: mum Debra has a Bachelor of Arts (she also worked at UQ in the 1990s) and her husband Kim has Bachelor of Laws/Arts.
Media enquiries: Fiona Cameron, UQ Communications, 07 3346 7086
