EOT 323 - Adam Linstaedt: Live Music During the Pandemic; Caroline Rocheleau: Golden Mummies of Egypt Exhibit at NCMA

Eye on the Triangle

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Eoin Trainor 0:00
The views and opinions expressed in Eye on the Triangle do not represent WKNC or the student media.

Good evening Raleigh and welcome to this week's episode of Eye on the Triangle on WKNC 88.1 FM HD one Raleigh, I'm Eoin Trainor. On tonight's episode contributor Elizabeth Esser will sit down with Caroline Rocheleau to talk about the North Carolina Museum of Art's new exhibit on golden mummies. And then a little later contributor Lise Knox will discuss live music during the pandemic with Adam Lindstaedt, owner of the local venue the Pour House. Stay tuned.

Elizabeth Esser 0:51
I'm Elizabeth Esser with WKNC 88.1 Eye on the Triangle. Today I am speaking with Caroline Rocheleau, curator of ancient art and Director of Research at the North Carolina Museum of Art to talk about the new golden mummies of Egypt exhibition that opened on March 6. Miss Rocheleau, thank you for joining us on Eye on the Triangle.

Caroline Rocheleau 1:11
Well, thank you for inviting me

Elizabeth Esser 1:12
To get things started can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and your position at the North Carolina Museum of Art.

Caroline Rocheleau 1:19
I am director of research and also curator of ancient art, which is I guess, my primary role at the museum. I take care of all the ancient things from ancient Egypt, to the Mediterranean like Greece and Rome and also the ancient Americas but I have a colleague working with me on those last collections.

Elizabeth Esser 1:38
What can visitors expect from golden mummies of Egypt?

Caroline Rocheleau 1:42
Well, I'll tell you a little secret. Since I started working at the museum about 15 years ago, people have been asking me, when are we going to have mummies? When are you going to bring an exhibition of mummies because we don't have any in our collection. And the second they found out that I was a trained Egyptologist, they thought, Oh, well, she's the person to get us some mummies. So what they can expect to see in Golden mummies of Egypt is mummies. However, we're focused on a very specific cultural period. And that's the end of Egyptian history, when Egypt was ruled by the Greeks and the Romans, so the mummies are not going to look like King Tutankhamun, for example, that's sort of an image that people have in their mind. So it's not going to be that they're still mummies. But there's cultural and artistic influence at that time that's coming from elsewhere in the Mediterranean, and you will see the Egyptians wearing like Roman hairstyles and togas and things like this. So on the outside, they look different on the inside, they're the same.

Elizabeth Esser 2:48
So the exhibition focuses on the Greco-Roman period. So what was unique about this particular period? And how do we see that translated in the exhibition?

Caroline Rocheleau 2:59
So Egypt has always been a multicultural environment, because of where it's located, you know, northeast Africa, but attached to Western Asia and like the, what we call today, the Middle East, and with access to the broader Mediterranean, now you really see it even more, because Egypt becomes part of other empires that have even further wider reaches. And if you think of just a Roman Empire, the fact that Roman Egypt is on par with Gaul with Roman France, is sort of mind boggling, you know, insert mind blowing emoji here, when you put that into perspective it's like, wow, other countries are as old as Egypt. And Egypt is now part of a much, much bigger network than it was before. So you do see as I mentioned earlier, those cultural influences coming in, because it's all part of the Empire. The Empire is very diverse. It runs from Western Asia, all the way through Western Europe, and the British Isles. So it's, it's quite bigger than Egypt at its height ever was. So you do see those influences? What does curating an exhibition during a pandemic look like? The curating part was not done by me because we this is a traveling exhibition. So it came. It's an exhibition that is circulated by Nomad Exhibitions based out of Scotland and the collection that is being presented is that of Manchester Museum in the UK. So my colleague there, Campbell Price, and Nomad Exhibitions worked together to curate the exhibition. That being said, installing an exhibition during a pandemic is something that nobody had ever done before. And this was complicated by the fact that people from Nomad and people from Manchester were supposed to come travel to North Carolina to install the cases and put the objects in the cases, because of the pandemic and the travel restrictions, nobody could travel. So it was a whole bunch of zoom meetings, phone calls, we had a WhatsApp, you know messaging group, because we're, they're basically helping us remotely put the cases together things we'd never put together before. The material that's you handle any material the same way. So that's not so much of an issue but it was trying to do all of this by ourselves when we were originally supposed to assist. So it was a lot trickier and you're in there with your mask, and you're putting in the objects and you're you're trying to stay six feet apart. That's impossible. So it's very nerve wracking at the same at the same time, but we pulled through, and it looks absolutely fabulous. But it was quite a challenge.

Elizabeth Esser 6:06
I understand that the triangle area is celebrating this exhibition along with the museum. Can you tell us a little bit about the community collaborations with the Golden Mummies of Egypt,

Caroline Rocheleau 6:16
We actually have a few goodies in various restaurants. And so we have places in Raleigh and Chapel Hill, for example, good day, good night at Origin Hotel in Raleigh. They have a cocktail called Gold of Egypt. There's another one called a golden goddess cocktail that's in Chapel Hill at Honeysuckle Lakewood, there's a bunch of different things. We even have chocolate, custom packaged sea salt chocolate, available at our museum, or I should say, our exhibition store, which is as you come out of the exhibition, it's it's right there, that's Videri Chocolate Factory, and they sell it at their store as well. Even in the store, we do have some goodies related to this bartending cocktail mix that we have. And we also have a candle that where the scent was made exclusively for us. And it's inspired by golden mommies. So that's actually kind of fun. Like you don't really see that in like exhibition stores something custom made like a candle. For example, Honeysuckle Tea House has Egyptian sunset tea made with chamomile, lemon balm, fall gold, ginkgo leaf, gingerroot, and oatstraw. That just kind of sounds nice, actually. So those are the kinds of partnerships that we have with local places like restaurants and tea houses and chocolates, like what could be better a cocktail, some chocolates after you visit the exhibition. That's awesome to me.

Elizabeth Esser 7:47
What is your favorite part of the exhibition?

Caroline Rocheleau 7:50
Goodness, I have lots of it's like asking for my favorite child. There's lots of different things that I like about the exhibition. I like that we are that we have mummies that people can finally see mummies, like I mentioned, we do not have any in our own collection. But I like also that the exhibition is more than just about mummies that we talk about multiculturalism, we still talk about, what is mummification? Has it changed or not during the Roman period? And a little bit you see this hinted in the exhibition, but there's a catalog also that accompanies it. And we dive into other themes li...