Tattoos rate over Dead Sea Scrolls

By BERNARD ORSMAN

The Auckland Museum has passed up the chance of exhibiting the Dead Sea Scrolls, but is going ahead with a show featuring naked body painting and photographs of genital piercings.

The museum board rejected a rare opportunity to present the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century, on the grounds the exhibition was too esoteric and would probably not break even.

But the city's guardians of history and culture are backing a body art exhibition in December in the belief it will be a huge summer hit.

The body art exhibition has been touring Australian state museums and was the first big show at the new Melbourne Museum last October, where it was rated for people aged 15 and over and attracted 30,000 visitors during the three months it was open.

The exhibition of tattooing, piercing and body modification has a tattooist studio, complete with biker mags, polaroids of women with butterflies on their breasts, and men showing off the work on their nether regions.

Bondage gear hung on mannequins features, along with Maori and Samoan tattooing tools.

Auckland Museum director Dr Rodney Wilson said the Maori and Samoan elements would be improved and New Zealand-born Joanne Gair, renowned for body-painting a heavily pregnant Demi Moore for Vanity Fair magazine, would take part.

Dr Wilson, who wanted to show both the scrolls and the body art exhibition, said the museum had a mandate to reflect all sections of society and body art was part of today's street culture.

Dr Paul McKechnie, a senior lecturer in early Christianity at Auckland University, said the Dead Sea Scrolls might not have been an exhibit of golden and beautiful objects, but many people were interested in the origins of Christianity.

The 2000-year-old scrolls were discovered in 1947 by Bedouin shepherds in the caves of barren hills surrounding the Dead Sea. They are the largest and oldest body of manuscripts relating to the Bible and the time of Jesus.

The Auckland Museum was offered the chance by the Israel Antiquities Authority to exhibit the scrolls after a tour of Australia. In Sydney, 73,000 people saw them; in Melbourne 46,000.

The plan was for the scrolls to come to Auckland in August for three months. They have now gone back to Israel.

Dr Wilson said the museum would have needed an attendance of 50,000 to cover fees to the Israel Antiquities Authority, transport, security, insurance and marketing.