After 20 Years, Egypt Unveils Monumental Museum Fit for the Pharaohs

I have some good, bad, and ugly news related to museums around the world.

Let’s start with the good. After 20 years, a period which included struggles with the Islamic extremist group Muslim Brotherhood, the Grand Egyptian Museum opened after a glamorous ceremony worthy of Cleopatra the Great.

Spectators including President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi gathered late on Saturday before an enormous screen outside the museum, which projected images of the country’s most famous cultural sites as dancers in glittering pharaonic-style garb waved glowing orbs and scepters.

They were accompanied by Egyptian pop stars and an international orchestra decked out in white beneath a sky lit with lasers, fireworks and hovering lights that formed into moving hieroglyphics.

By opening the museum, Egypt was “writing a new chapter in the story of this ancient nation’s present and future,” Sisi said at the opening...