Last week, Lebanon Sursock Museum opened its doors to the public for the first time from the port of Beirut blast on August 4, 2020. Located in the Achrafieh district, just over half a mile from the site of the explosions, the museum suffered severe structural and cosmetic damage from the devastating explosion that displaced more than 300 000 people, injured more than 7,000 and killed at least 217, according to statistics from Amnesty International.
According to a 127-page report by a Human Rights Watch investigation, the explosion – considered one of the largest non-nuclear explosions on record – was caused by careless storage of ammonium nitrate, an explosive chemical, following years of mismanagement and corruption at the port.
In a interview with Hyperallergic a day after the explosion, former Sursock Museum director Zeina Arida described the explosion as “unlike anything we have ever seen”.
“At first we were worried there would be shelling and there would be more to follow, so we stayed in the building,” Arida said. “We quickly realized how extensive the damage was.”
In the aftermath of the port explosion, the museum was forced to close for almost three years. It underwent repairs by LiBeirut, a Initiative led by UNESCO to restore educational and cultural institutions in the Lebanese capital damaged by the explosions. The nearly $2.5 million restoration project was supported by €1 million ($1,072,535) in funding from the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS), as well as aid other donors, including the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Zones (ALIPH) and French Ministry of Culture.
On the day of the explosion, the Sursock Museum featured two main exhibits that featured at least 126 works from the institution’s permanent collection and other pieces on loan from outside private sources. The museum reported that 32 paintings, 28 works on paper and six sculptures on display on the first and second floors of the building suffered the most damage, including tearing of broken glass, stains and extensive paint loss. Other works on display had less damage, mostly covered in a layer of dust from the explosion.
Additionally, the institution’s historic Ottoman and Venetian Gothic architecture required extensive restoration, as port explosions shattered all of the museum’s stained glass windows, completely blew out the building’s metal doors and fallen ceilings, and caused havoc on its white exterior walls and intricately carved wood panel doors.
Formerly the 1912 villa of aristocratic Lebanese art collector Nicolas Sursock, the Sursock Museum is considered a beacon of Lebanese culture and history, holding over 1,500 paintings, sculptures, tapestries and installations in its permanent collection. The museum also houses the Fouad Debbas Collection, a photographic archive containing more than 30,000 photographs, postcards and manuscripts from Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Turkey from 1830 until the mid-20th century.
The cultural institution reopened on May 26 with five galleries of classic and modern artwork on display. This is the fourth time the museum has reopened since 1961.
(photos by Rowina Bou Harb, courtesy Sursock Museum)
The Sursock Museum reports that it was able to recover 55 damaged structures of its collection, the majority of which have been repaired in-house through a meticulous restoration process that began in May 2021. Three works – ‘Untitled (Consolation)’ (1970) by Armenian-Palestinian artist Paul Guiragossian, ‘Portrait d’Odile Mazloum” (1967) by the Croatian-born artist Cici Tamazeo-Sursock and the “Portrait of Nicolas Sursock” (circa 1926-1930) by the Franco-Dutch painter Kees van Dongen – have been restored at the Center Pompidou in Paris and returned to the museum in April 2023 after an extended restoration process.
In addition to the works of art, the restoration project consisted of replacing all the windows in the building; repair its doors, elevators, ceilings and skylights; and the installation of a solar panel system to increase the energy sustainability of the museum.
