São Paulo – The Egyptian ambassador to Brasília (the Brazilian capital), Ahmed Hassan Darwish, who is on an official visit to the city of São Paulo, got to know the Museum of the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation (Faap), a higher education institution in São Paulo, on this Wednesday (9th). Darwish is selecting a location for an exhibition on Egypt next year. The exhibition should portray the different phases of Egyptian history and the cultural heritage that they left for the country.
“We want to show the Brazilians our culture. Most people only know the pyramids and the sphinx. There is much more than that to Egypt,” says the ambassador. He also recalls that in addition to the Pharaonic times, the country lived other eras, such as the Greek, Roman, Coptic-Christian, and Islamic periods, all of which influenced the arts and culture in the country.
The goal is to take the exhibition to several large cities in Brazil, such as Salvador, Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, Florianópolis, Recife, Brasília and São Paulo. Darwish enjoyed the premises destined for exhibitions at the Faap Museum.
The Faap promotes exhibitions in two places, the Cultural Salon and the Annie Hall, the former of which has 1,200 square metres and the latter, 700 square metres. Last year, for instance, 19 exhibitions were promoted. According to the Events manager of the Faap Museum, Fernanda Celidonio, exhibitions are selected according to the contents of the courses that the institution promotes.
The university has approximately 14,000 students in seven different schools: Administration, Fine Arts, Computing, Communication and Marketing, Law, Economics and Engineering. An exhibition on Egypt would be of interest to the School of Fine Arts.
Each school offers several courses, according to the manager. With regard to Arab countries, Faap promoted an exhibition on Egypt, in the year 2000, and another on Morocco, last year. Admittance to the exhibitions is free.
Darwish visited the Faap, where he was welcomed by Fernanda, accompanied by the commercial consul of Egypt in São Paulo, Mahmoud Mazhar, the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce secretary general, Michel Alaby, and the International Relations vice president of the organization, Helmi Nasr.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum