The Sursock Museum, one of Beirut’s most prominent cultural institutions, will reopen its doors at the end of May, director Karina El Helou told the National.
The announcement comes after reports on Monday incorrectly said it would reopened in March, sparking excitement among art-lovers in Lebanon.
“The museum will resume its programming at the end of May. The exact date and programme will be communicated later,” Ms El Helou said.
Beirut’s largest and oldest independent cultural institution was closed after suffering severe damage in the deadly 2020 Beirut blast.
Entire sections of the early 20th-century villa and its iconic stained glass were destroyed and the 30 artworks on display at the time of the explosion were also damaged.
As the repairs were made, the museum resumed partial activities, including art festivals, talks and workshops.
But its exhibition spaces remain closed.
“The rehabilitation works are set to be finished by the end of February,” Ms El Helou said.
She said that the Sursock Museum had raised $2 million to save the Beirut architectural landmark, without any government help.
The funding came mainly from the Italian government and Unesco, which jointly donated $965,000. The French Ministry of Culture and ALIPH, a global fund dedicated to the rehabilitation of cultural heritage in conflict zones, both donated $500,000.
The museum was once the private villa of Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock, an art collector and a member of one of Beirut’s most prominent families, before it was turned into a modern art museum in 1961.
Upon his death, the Lebanese collector bequeathed his villa to the city of Beirut as an art museum. He said he wished his “country to receive a substantial contribution of fine artworks” and his fellow citizens to “develop an artistic instinct”.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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