The feds’ raid is already ancient history at Bowers

“The Egyptians didn’t care about the brain,” the docent told the school kids seated on the floor Friday morning around a rag doll version of an ancient Egyptian boy. “They believed it was the heart that mattered.”

The students then saw and heard him describe how, when preparing a body for mummification, holy men would use instruments to reach through the dead person’s nose and extract brain matter.

Just another day at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, where oldsters and youngsters have viewed the mummy exhibit the last three years.

Just another day, that is, but for the federal raid on the place 24 hours earlier. Most likely, the kids hadn’t read the papers Friday morning and didn’t know that the docents -- part of the “good guy” segment of society -- were soldiering on while waiting to see what the fallout would be from the raid.

Raid?

The feds raid sweatshops where vulnerable immigrants are worked to the bone.

Or nondescript storefronts that hide illegal bookmaking operations.

Or the house in the hills that doubles as a meth lab.

They don’t raid museums.

Museums are where we escape to, not from.

Where we go to forget about the world’s craziness, not run into it.

Where we go to satisfy our aesthetic needs, connect with our ancestral roots and, while we’re there, buy an overpriced lunch.

At least, those are the expectations.

But just like a tour group on a planned visit, federal agents converged on the Bowers and three other Southern California museums early Thursday morning in search of proof that the museum knowingly accepted looted antiquities.

The search warrant that led to the raid contends that Bowers accepted smuggled items from Thailand and Native American sites in the United States.

If anything contributed to a sense of normality at this potentially damaging moment in the museum’s history, it was the docents, mostly retired teachers who give of their time and knowledge.

In one wing, a docent explained the importance of the crook and flail in ancient Egypt, and how it symbolized power for Egyptian gods like Osiris.

In another wing, a docent was introducing students to “TJ,” a nickname for Tjayasetimu, a mummified 12-year-old girl who predates the students by about 3,000 years.

The docent wasn’t sure how she died, but told the students that modern-day technology had allowed researchers to “see” an abdominal incision used to remove her organs before mummification.

Virtually all organizations trade on their reputations. No different for museums, which depend on donors and the buying public to keep them afloat.

The coordinated raids Thursday came in the wake of claims in recent years from Italy and Greece that major American museums -- most notably the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles -- bought stolen or smuggled art from their countries.

Late Friday afternoon, after more meetings with federal agents, Bowers President Peter Keller said the raid represented a “huge distraction” for the museum.

“For the most part, we don’t understand where they’re coming from,” Keller said of the investigation.

Still, allegedly being linked to smuggling and a related tax fraud scam isn’t the kind of publicity any museum wants.

Somewhat complicating things is that Armand Labbe, the museum’s curator and its representative -- mentioned most unflatteringly in the search warrant affidavit -- died of cancer in 2005.

The Thai items represented an area of Labbe’s particular expertise, Keller noted, adding that Labbe wrote about them extensively but that they never were displayed in the museum.

As with all federal investigations, things operate on two tracks for the parties identified with it: the alleged improprieties and the perception.

I asked Keller about the latter.

He said he is “just very frustrated” by the publicity, but added: “I’m guessing things are pretty well back to normal in the public areas [of the museum]. We’re feeling a lot better today than yesterday.”

Asked if he could do anything to speed up a return to normality, he said, “I don’t think there’s anything we can do but let it play out.”

And does he have a sense of how it will play out? “Not at all,” he said.

We know one thing: Bowers, with its modest size and admittedly less grandiose aims, never would expect to be mentioned in the same breath with the Getty.

Until now.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.