Whose Egypt? Challenging How Museums Portray Egypt with Heba Abd el Gawad

The J. Paul Getty Museum invites you to a lecture by Heba Abd el Gawad (Egyptian Heritage and Museum Specialist) titled Whose Egypt? Challenging How Museums Portray Egypt on Saturday, February 21 at 2:00 pm. The talk will take place in person at the Getty Villa Auditorium and online via Zoom. To register for the Zoom link or to get free tickets, please click here.

For more than a century, museums have framed ancient Egypt as an object of fascination—something to collect, display, and consume—often disconnected from its current people and cultures. In this talk, Egyptologist Heba Abd el Gawad examines how the land’s heritage and identity have been shaped into a museum commodity and how this approach is finally being challenged. She explores how museums can move beyond appropriation toward more responsible, meaningful, and inclusive ways of representing Egypt and its people, past and present.

About the Speaker
Heba Abd el Gawad is an Egyptian heritage and museum specialist and a research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. She specializes in the history of Egyptian archaeology and contemporary Egyptian perceptions and representations of ancient Egypt. Her current multimedia project is All Eyes on Her! at London’s Horniman Museum and Gardens, which connects contemporary Egyptian perspectives with Egyptian collections dispersed across the world through the voices and experiences of women engaged in acts of everyday activism.