Shattered glass of Beirut: collaboration between the Archaeological Museum (American University of Beirut) and international partners following the 2020 port explosion
Resource type
Journal article
Creator (person)
Panayot, Nadine
Rizk, Aimée Bou
à‡amurcuoglu, Duygu
Cuyaubère, Claire
Dyer, Joanne
Fraser, James
Freestone, Ian
Klink-Hoppe, Zeina
Meek, Andrew
Date published
November 20, 2023
Abstract
The Archaeological Museum at the American University of Beirut (AUB) lies approximately 3 km west of the main port of Beirut, the site of the massive explosion that sent a catastrophic shockwave through the city on 4 August 2020. A display case containing Classical and early Islamic period glass vessels was smashed against the museum’s stone floor, shattering 72 vessels into thousands of shards. This paper overviews how the Archaeological Museum (AM) responded to the situation with international partners to document, collect, identify, study, conserve and restore the broken pieces, and how this process of recovery would ultimately imbue the vessels with new historical resonance. In particular, the paper presents a collaborative project with the British Museum (BM) that developed from broader international-AM efforts. The partnership had three objectives: (i) to reconstruct eight of the shattered vessels in conservation laboratories at the BM; (ii) to provide training for a museum professional from the AM as part of the restoration programme in London; and (iii) to conduct scientific analyses of the broken shards before conservation. A fourth objective was realized August–October 2022, when the reconstructed vessels were featured in a single-room exhibition at the BM titled Shattered Glass of Beirut, jointly developed by AM and BM curators, in which the vessels helped tell a broader story about the port explosion and its effects on the people of Lebanon.
Journal title
Levant
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
ISSN
0075-8914
eISSN
1756-3801
Official URL
Rights statement
In Copyright