A duel to the ... death?

In Los Angeles, it’s not rare to see two billboards advertising summer movies from competing studios strategically placed along the same commercial strip -- or perhaps two similar, giant poster images of young, thin, hungry-looking people wearing different brands of designer jeans.

But this may be the city’s first case of dueling mummies.

Opening June 16 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Wilshire Boulevard is “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” a reinvention of the landmark “Treasures of Tutankhamen” exhibition that drew 8 million people during its 1976-79 tour of seven U.S. cities.

But near the museum, one can spot banners featuring a different encased mummy, advertising a different exhibition altogether: “Mummies: Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt ... Treasures from the British Museum,” on view at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana through April 15, 2007.

According to the Los Angeles Department of Public Works, which oversees the placement of banners on city streets, companies that request the banners pay for them. Applicants also request locations for their banners, and the department’s bureaus of street services and street lighting then determine the locations “based on City ordinances, dates of display, overlap or conflict with other banners, i.e., when one program ends and another begins.”

County museum officials choose to remain, er, mum on the subject of the Bowers’ mummy-in-residence in their neighborhood, refusing to comment on the matter. And in a prepared statement, Bowers Museum President Peter Keller also sidesteps the question, saying: “The Bowers Museum’s goal is to be as visible as possible throughout Southern California. We have a wonderful museum with extraordinary exhibitions ... and it’s vital to our success that we reach as many people as possible.”

Diane Haithman