Rita Keegan
In: Time Machine: Anciet Egypt and Contemporary Art. Edited by James Putnam and W. Vivian Davies. Published by the Trustees of the British Museum and the Institute of International Visual Arts, 1994, p. 14.
Growing up in New York City is a mixed blessing, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art definitely comes out on the plus side. I was lucky to be introduced to it at an early age and I've never looked back. The Museum and Radio City Music Hall were my two favourite places and the 'Met' was number one.
Wandering through this treasure chest was always full of new surprises. No matter how many times I visited and other things that I discovered, or how my taste changed over the years, the rooms in the Egyptian collection remained an essential visit.
It was only natural when I moved to London that I would start to investigate and explore the British Museum. I had visited the museum many times, when in the spring of 1989 I went to sketch some of the goddess sculptures for a project I was working on. I came across a statue of a seated couple who bore a striking resemblance to my mother and father. It was the Old Kingdom painted limestone pair-statue of Kaitep and Hetepheres.
So when I started thinking of what I wanted to create for this exhibition, I felt I wanted to explore how the collection affected me on several levels, first on a spiritual one, the effect of living in a polytheistic society with many important female deities; then on the personal level, examining the family likeness and the different ways to interpret an ancient or personal history and how they are read in the context of the museum.