The explosions of August 4, 2020 at the port of Beirut, which left more than 200 dead, more than 6500 injured and devastated several districts of the Lebanese capital, also devastated the rich cultural and architectural heritage of the city.
A year later, many traditional houses and listed palaces, as well as hundreds of historic buildings, witnesses of a rich past and already weakened during the civil war (1975-1990), still bear the scars of the explosions.
Among them, the Sursock Museum of Modern Art, a showcase of Beirut cultural life opened in 1961, and located 800 meters from the port, in an opulent street in the Achrafieh district, in the east of the capital.
On August 4, in a few seconds, the sumptuous palace with Venetian influences, built in 1912 and bequeathed to the cultural world in 1952 by the art lover Nicolas Sursock, was blown away.
A few months before the explosion, a Picasso exhibition bringing together works estimated at 225 million euros was still organized there, a sign of the reputation and prestige of the place.
The jewel of Lebanese cultural life
Under overwhelming heat, Zeina Arida, the dynamic director of the museum, observes with a certain emotion the immaculate facade of the building with two large monumental staircases, whose splendid multicolored stained glass windows had been pulverized.
Screenshot of telesurveillance images taken seconds after the August 4 explosions.
© Sursock Museum
From the esplanade crushed by the Beirut sun, she can see, shielding her eyes from the sun, two workers busy with the meticulous placement of the first two stained-glass windows.
Freshly delivered, they will replace blue protective panels which still number in the tens.
A first step in the restoration of the building visible from the outside.
The private non-profit institution, which will celebrate its 60th anniversary in November, hopes to reopen its doors to the public, again free of charge, in the spring of 2022.
Two workers prepare to install one of the new stained glass windows on the facade of the Sursock Museum.
© Marc Daou, France 24
"We managed to find the funding and move forward with the repairs and reconstruction of the museum in a very short period of time, after seeing the fruit of our labor being destroyed in a few seconds," explains Zeina Arida, present with members of his team during the explosion which took place ten minutes after the closure to the public.After August 4, we took two months to clear the debris and take stock of the damage in order to be able to quantify the repairs, secure the works, the building so that staff and volunteers are not in danger ".
The management has also launched a campaign to dust off all the contents of the only museum of contemporary art in the capital, where, in normal times, many works by Lebanese artists from the beginning of the 19th century to the years are exhibited. 2000, as well as historical records and rare Islamic artefacts.
The dust had rushed into the basement floors, where large, sturdy fire doors were also blown out.
"The thick dust which accompanied the blast of the explosion settled everywhere, including in the storerooms, on all the paintings, all the works of art, the archives and the books. A job had to be cut down. titanic, led by several teams of volunteers for nearly 4 months, to overcome it ", recalls Zeina Arida.
The restoration workshop of the Sursock Museum, located in the basement of the building.
© Marc Daou, France 24
In addition to the heavy material damage, 57 works of art were damaged, including a portrait of Nicolas Sursock, painted in 1930 by the Dutchman Kees van Dongen.
It will be restored in the coming months by the Center Pompidou in Paris, which offered its services the day after the explosion.
The vast majority of the paintings have been resuscitated on site, in the workshop of the best equipped museum in the country.
A surge of saving international solidarity
A few minutes after the blasts, the director, at the head of the museum since 2014, did not think that this beacon of Lebanese culture could rise again. "I still remember hearing the sound of the destruction of the museum," she says, walking down a corridor on the first floor which still bears the marks of the tragedy. A quarter of an hour after the explosion, I was very angry and I cried when I saw the extent of the damage, telling myself that it would be pointless to rebuild everything on the same unstable bases in this country ".
And to add: "But after a night in a state of shock, the next day we benefited from a tremendous outpouring of national and international solidarity which gave us the courage to meet our responsibilities and not no more asking questions in order to quickly get into action ".
No state official has offered help for the Sursock Museum, and no family of victims has received official visits after the explosion, assures Zeina Arida.
"This explosion was the physical manifestation of the corruption and violence in which the political class rules Lebanon," she asserts.
The solidarity in question was manifested by international aid for the reconstruction of the museum and proposals for aid for the restoration of the works, part of which comes from the French Ministry of Culture.
The latter offered aid in the amount of 500,000 euros for the restoration of part of the stained glass windows on the facade, as well as for the rehabilitation of the first floor of the building, the historic wing of the listed building.
Zeina Arida, director of the Sursock museum, in front of one of the monumental staircases of the building built in 1912. © Marc Daou, France 24
"We have raised nearly 2 million euros so far, mainly thanks to the help of France, another from the Franco-Emirati Aliph Foundation [International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Zones], and finally from the Italian government, via Unesco, which has allocated one million euros, a major part of which will be devoted to the reconstruction of the building ", confides Elsa Hokayem, deputy director of the museum, who also came to attend the placement of the first stained glass windows of the facade.
While the overall damage assessment stands at 2.54 million euros, according to management, French funding has also made it possible to restore the famous Arab living room of the museum and its woodwork which made it famous.
Pushing open the majestic wooden doors leading to this iconic room located on the first floor of the museum, Zeina Arida sighs and sketches a smile that can be seen under her surgical mask.
An emotion shared with Elsa Hokayem, who widens her eyes as she looks around the room.
"It may seem out of step with the reality of the current situation in Lebanon, but it was very difficult to see this heritage, which belongs to everyone, and this emblematic room of the museum destroyed and covered with dust, says Zeina Arida. pleasure to see the Arab living room in much better condition ".
A team of workers during the installation of one of the stained glass windows in the Arab living room of the Sursock museum.
© Marc Daou, France 24
Several workers are busy behind them to install stained glass in this room composed mainly of woodwork, under the expert eye of Camille Tarazi. An architect by training from a family involved for five generations in oriental art from Damascus to Beirut via Jerusalem and Cairo. The know-how of the famous Tarazi house, a family business he joined in 1997, is also visible in the woodwork of the Résidence des Pins, a historic building and current headquarters of the French Embassy in Beirut.
"Since August 4, I have a feeling of rage and a desire to want to put everything back in place very quickly so that the heritage of Beirut, sacked that day, and the memory of the work of several generations of my family and many other craftsmen passed down from father to son, ”he explains, keeping an eye on the installation of the stained-glass windows.
"We were fortunate, in 2013, to restore the museum's Arab living room, and the original stained glass windows were still present even though they had suffered during the Lebanese civil war. But all our efforts vanished in a few thousandths of a century. seconds. We had to find and sort out as much as possible all the debris littered on the ground, which allowed us to put some parts back in place and to reconstruct the doors and the casements of the internal wooden windows ".
The stained glass windows in the living room did not survive the explosion.
They had to be redone identically from drawings and patterns recovered from the ground, not without the support of Saint-Gobain, the French group specializing in construction materials.
The company offered, in addition to building materials, the blown glass needed to redo all the stained glass windows in the museum and its main facade.
The architect Camille Tarazi, member of the Maison Tarazie involved for five generations in oriental art.
© Marc Daou, France 24
The elegant oriental woodwork, parts of which were damaged by shards of glass and the projection of the doors by the blast of the explosion, will be restored after the end of the work.
"Miraculously, 75% of the woodwork survived this explosion, thanks to the flexibility of the wooden structures", emphasizes Camille Tarazi.
“Since the middle of the 19th century, we have often been back and forth as a family of cabinetmakers. But it was very difficult to accept having to come back to these places after August 4th, and also to this neighborhood. "But we have accepted the challenge and shown that we are still here, despite the ups and downs and increasingly complicated situations".
The personal and family history of this 47-year-old architect is ultimately intimately linked to that of Lebanese heritage, itself frequently violated by the tumultuous history of Lebanon.
A museum and a team weighed down by the economic crisis
A Lebanon marked by a governance crisis at the origin of an economic and financial crisis affecting all Lebanese, including the driving forces of the museum team.
Two of its members, the collections director who moved to France, and the communications officer, have already left the country in search of a better future.
"The current economic crisis pushes people to leave to be able to meet their needs, knowing that the funding of the museum, except reconstruction, is in Lebanese pounds, explains Zeina Arida. However, the value of our salaries in Lebanese pounds has been divided by ten".
The purchasing power of the Lebanese has collapsed in less than two years, the national currency has lost more than 90% of its value against the dollar, while the country of the Cedar is teetering with shortages that follow one another week after week .
These inadequacies threaten, in concrete terms, the very existence of the works in the museum.
"We have reached a higher stage of difficulties due to the economic crisis, plague Zeina Arida. As prices panic and shortages threaten, we must, for example, ensure the supply of fuel oil to the generators, used during daily power cuts, so that they continue to supply the air conditioning in the reserves, vital to protect all the works stored since the explosion ".
After years of rationing, the national electricity company of Lebanon (EDL) has almost stopped providing electricity in recent weeks.
Lebanon, short of foreign exchange, struggles to import enough fuel oil to run its power plants, causing cuts of up to 23 hours a day.
It is in this context, as the commemorations approach, that the museum will pay tribute, during the month, to two victims of the explosion. "On August 4 we will be in the street with the families of the victims to demand justice, our place is at their side, specifies Zeina Arida. A few days later, we will install a swing on the esplanade, in memory of a little boy 2-year-old Australian, Isaac Oehlers, who often came to the museum with his parents, and a beautiful bench designed by Gaïa Fodoulian, who died at the age of 29 from the explosion, and whose mother is a friend of the museum ". Two gestures that will go straight to the hearts of families, while the investigation into the explosions in the port is still ongoing and struggling to move forward.
"A year later, many things have changed in Lebanon, but in the wrong direction. The cultural sector, which contributes enormously to moving society forward and making the Lebanese dream and think, cannot work a miracle, concludes Zeina Arida. by closing the doors of the Arab show. If the country continues to drift, without perspective and without justice, the cultural sector and its actors will also slide into the abyss ".
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