The Art of Egypt

This will be a full day in the comfort of a private vehicle which introduces you to art museums and galleries which you will leave in awe.  From the largest museum of Islamic art to the local galleries pushing the boundaries.  Simply exciting!

The Museum of Islamic Art

The Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo is acknowledged as the largest museum specialising in Islamic Art in the world.  Currently it houses over 100,000 artifacts covering all the different forms of Islamic Art from the various periods of Islamic history.

Its collection is comprehensive in quantity and quality of its coverage.  This has made it a beacon of Islamic art and civilization throughout its history. It also become the ‘go to’ organisation and library for researchers and historians.  It attracts visitors from all walks of life, who are interested in delving into the intricacies of Islamic sciences and disciplines such as medicine, engineering and astronomy.

Its collection includes metallic, glass and porcelain utensils, as well as jewellery, weapons, wood and ivory objects, textiles, carpets. The museum ​also has a large library that has a rich collection of specialized books and references covering a wide variety of topics like Islamic history, antiquities, art and architecture.

 David Hussein Gallery

Henein was renowned as a sculptor since the 1950s and rose to fame for the inspiration his art drew from ancient Egypt. He was awarded the Luxor Studio Scholarship for Distinguished Artists in the West Bank and Qurna in 1954 and 1955 and led the restoration of the Great Sphinx of Giza from 1989 to 1998.

After living in Paris, he returned to Egypt and started the International Sculpture Symposium in Aswan. He received many awards, including Egypt’s State Medal and the Mubarak Award. Henein’s art has been shown worldwide, from Alexandria to Rome, and displayed in world-class platforms like New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The main museum building consists of 3 floors, spread across the space of 700 meters, displaying an array of Adam’s work, featuring sculptures, drawings, paintings, prints, and even textiles. In addition to the main building, the museum’s garden is where Adam’s pieces blend in with nature. This open space is where the museum’s public audience get to sit down on the fresh grass and have a cup of coffee while having the chance to admire more of Adam’s artworks.

Since Adam himself oversaw and supervised the process of establishing and equipping the museum, you walk around the space knowing that the artist himself chose every tiny detail around the museum.

Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Center

Near the pyramids at Giza, the centre was founded in the early 1950s by the late architect Ramses Wissa Wassef as a weaving school. It has since evolved to comprise workshops and showrooms, a pottery and sculpture museum, houses and farm buildings, constructed entirely of mud brick.

For Wissa Wassef, vaulted and domed mud brick structures represented something quintessentially Egyptian as these forms had been adopted in turn by Paranoiac, Coptic and Islamic civilisations. The choice of this traditional technology also reflected his desire to transmit the values of handicraft to succeeding generations in a rapidly industrialising country.

The Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Center was the home of a unique experiment in tapestry weaving that has produced extraordinary works admired and collected by museums and galleries around the world.  And is ceramic creations was also a passion that drove him in his life.

Wael Shawky Studio

Shawky gained international recognition for his works that trace the history o the Crusades through a Middle Eastern lens.  Wael Shawky’s work tackles notions of national, religious and artistic identity through film, performance and storytelling. Shawky frames contemporary culture through the lens of historical tradition and vice versa. Mixing truth and fiction, childlike wonder and spiritual doctrine, Shawky has staged epic recreations of the medieval clashes between Muslims and Christians in his trilogy of puppets and marionettes  In 2024, Shawky was selected to represent Egypt at the 60th Venice Biennale.

This full day tour can be combined with other tours for a multi day experience with One Horizon.  The other tours include Khan El Khalili Bazaar, Old Cairo (Coptic and Islamic History), the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation, Stairways to Eternity (The Pyramids of Giza) and many others. Please enquire at One Horizon for your options.

• Pick up and return from your hotel
• Air conditioned luxury vehicles for your private tour
• Lunch
• All entrance fees, service charge, current taxes, and vat.
• Services of an English-speaking guide
• (Optional) Membership of the Ancient Egyptian Research Association (AERA) which supports the training of young Egyptian archaeologists and field work excavations in Egypt

Exclusions

• Personal expenditure of any kind
• Tips
• Alcoholic Drinks and extra meals (other than those stated in the itinerary)