SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- One of only three such sarcophagi in the U.S., it and its occupant have moved to new quarters at San Francisco State University, where Sutro’s Egyptian Collection was long housed in the Humanities Building. Now it shares space at the new Global Museum with a host of objects — a bold Yoruban helmet mask from Nigeria, potent spirit boards from Papua New Guinea, pieces from Asia and the Americas — from the school’s Treganza Anthropology Collection that had mostly been in storage.
The sarcophagus, with its exquisite painted patterns, birds and sun disks, will be among 175 objects on view when the museum opens to the public April 26 with an inaugural exhibition that announces its intention: Going Global: From San Francisco to the World.
“We want visitors to appreciate the fact that these were people, and instill a certain respect in the way they think about and approach mummies. So we’re not going to display human remains in the museum space per se,” says Professor Edward Luby, director of the University’s Museum Studies Program and chief curator of the Global Museum, which is in the Fine Arts Building and will be used as a “learning lab” for students of the curatorial arts.