It is good news for the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum lovers in Cairo as the museum opens its doors for all after a decade long closure.

The much-loved Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo, located at Giza Egypt was built in the early 20th century in a palace. While the museum remains a favourite to history and museum buffs, it has been infamous due to a theft that took place in 2010 when a famous painting of ‘Poppy Flowers’ by Van Gogh was stolen.

However, owing to renovations and security improvements, the museum has finally reopened after more than a decade-long closure.

 
The museum boasts of a personal collection of more than 300 paintings and 50 sculptures by some of the most renowned artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries – including Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin among others.

After a decade long renovation and refurbishing work, the museum opened on April 4 and was inaugurated by Minister of Culture –Ines Abdel Dayem who is also part of a broad plan to develop and improve Egypt’s museums.

Since the stealing of painting in 2009 and 2010, the security of the museum was questioned and ever since the renovation was on several fronts, including the building itself and the security shared the museum’s director Tarek Maamoun.

Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil who was a politician, serving as agriculture minister and speaker of the Egyptian senate, and an avid art collector met his French wife Emilienne Luce during his visit to Paris in n 1897 to study law at the Sorbonne. It was Luce who instilled the love of art and collecting art in him.

Before his death in 1953, Khalil handed over the house and its possessions to his wife. She in turn donated it in her will to the Egyptian government, asking to transform the palace into an art space. The museum opened for the first time in July 1962.

The newly renovated museum has improved security since its theft in 2010. The museum now has more sophisticated security alarms and all of the museum’s paintings are surrounded by laser security alarms that go off if visitors get too close. There are security personnel also who are present there in plain clothes who linger nearby along with cameras pointing at every angle.