LEBANON-MUSEUM-REOPENING Beirut art museum reopens to tell a troubled city's history

Record ID: 136079

  • Title: LEBANON-MUSEUM-REOPENING Beirut art museum reopens to tell a troubled city's history
  • Date: 11th October 2015
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF EXTERIOR OF MUSEUM
  • Embargoed: 26th October 2015 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Lebanon
  • Country: Lebanon
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA7TJDG6N90DMEHJHG6QN4KKKSI
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: A stone's throw from dramatic street protests shaking central Beirut, art lovers gathered on Thursday (October 8) to celebrate the reopening of a museum of modern art which they hailed as a symbol of the Lebanese capital's resilience through conflict and turmoil.
    The Sursock Museum, an Italianate mansion built for an Ottoman aristocrat, first opened to the public when he bequeathed it to the city more than 60 years ago.
    In the 1960s, when Beirut flourished as the Middle East's capital of culture, the Sursock galleries boasted paintings and sculptures by artists from Lebanon and across the world.
    The country's 1975-1990 civil war all but shut down the museum, and it closed again in 2008 for extensive renovation, before finally opening this week for a third time.
    "Sursock museum is a part of Lebanon's modern history, a history that the war of 1975 tried to erase," said Rafic Chlala, a former presidential adviser attending a reception to mark its latest reincarnation. "But this museum resisted and stayed a cultural landmark in Lebanon," he said.
    Many, like Suzi Hakimian, the director of the National Museum, were happy to see Sursock museum finally reopen.
    "This is certainly a great day to see the Sursock museum again. The Sursock museum is one of the main bones of city's museums, it is indispensable and was missed for a long time because it represents the modern art for us. Here, modern art is presented and here it should be," Hakimian said.
    Architect, Pierre Karam, who worked on the renovation of Sursock museum, said the opening symbolised hope for Beirut.
    "This is a big hope for Lebanon and for Beirut, the city we love; and hopefully this beginning will reflect positively on the country as a whole," Karam said.
    Beirut has been hit by a series of protests in recent months against Lebanon's politicians, who bickered over the summer months while rubbish lay uncollected across the city.
    On Thursday (October 8), riot police fired teargas and water cannon to disperse demonstrators, some of whom threw rocks and water bottles back at them. The confrontation took place on the edge of Martyrs Square, less than 1 km (1 mile) from the Sursock.
    The political deadlock is one fallout of the four-year civil war in neighbouring Syria, which has also brought bombings, economic slowdown and more than 1 million refugees to Lebanon.
    But some, like University professor Mona Fawaz, didn't see a contradiction between the protests in Beirut and and the revival of the Sursock Museum.
    "What is happening is great. For me, the protests and the exhibition today are not contradictory but both work in the same direction. Both say that there is still hope and will in Beirut, and people who are working to make the city better," Fawaz said.
    Italian ambassador in Lebanon, Massimo Marotti, said the museum will add to the capital city's already thriving cultural scene.
    "I think every initiative, any buildings, any witnesses of art and life in Lebanon and Lebanese, or artists of the region will improve the quality of life in the city, the cultural activity which is always very intense in Beirut and in Lebanon. I think the people and the tourists will love it," Maroti said.
    For Zeina Arida, the Director of Sursock Museum, it is a space where different visions can meet.
    "We lack of spaces where we can meet, different visions can quarrel, can get along. I mean I think it is very important to be able to discuss all different kind of issues through different ways so of course we are a space for the arts but we are a space for dialogue, for exchange; so it is very important," Arida said.
    For the next three months, the museum is displaying 200 works of art tracing Beirut's evolution from a provincial Ottoman town in 1800 to a booming national capital in the 1960s - including late 19th century photographs, a watercolour by Lebanese artist Amine el Bacha and a 1966 piece by British artist David Hockney.
    A more permanent exhibition shows the development of Lebanese modern art over the past two centuries.
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