Lebanon’s Sursock Museum has reopened to the public, three years after a deadly explosion in the nearby Beirut port reduced many of its treasured paintings and collections to ashes.
A crowd of people gather at the courtyard of the Sursock Museum during an opening event for the iconic venue in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, May 26, 2023. The museum has reopened to the public, three years after after a deadly explosion in the nearby Beirut port reduced many of its treasured paintings and collections to ashes. A crowd of people gather at the courtyard of the Sursock Museum during an opening event for the iconic venue in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, May 26, 2023.
Originally built as a private villa in 1912 on a hilltop overlooking the city’s Achrafieh neighborhood, the opulent residence integrated Venetian and Ottoman styles. Its owner, famed Lebanese art collector Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock, bequeathed his beloved home to his people, to be tuned into a contemporary art museum upon his death in 1952.
The destruction was unprecedented, said museum director Karina El Helou, a level unseen even during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war. Seventy percent of the building was badly damaged, as were 66 of the 132 art pieces on display, she said. Glass shards tore through Dutch artist Kees Von Dongen’s portrait of Nicolas Sursock.
“White powder from the blast that we saw everywhere in Beirut even reached our storage room four stories underground,” El Helou said. She hopes the reopening will boost the morale of many Lebanese amid the country’s economic meltdown — and offer a “safe space” for free expression. “I now hope all the friends of the Sursock who may have left Lebanon in recent years at least come back to visit us,” the museum’s chairman, Tarek Mitri, told The Associated Press as he greeted guests.
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