Beirut and the Golden Sixties revisits a turbulent chapter in the development of modernism in Beirut beginning with the 1958 Lebanon crisis and ending with the 1975 outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War. Through 230 works by 34 artists and more than 300 archival documents, the exhibition examines this romanticised era of global influence in Beirut to highlight how collisions between art, culture and polarised political ideologies turned the Beirut art scene into a microcosm for larger trans-regional tensions. As a city that is arguably in and of itself a manifesto of fragility, Beirut continues to evoke both vulnerability and determination – or at least traces of it – and conjure forms of resistance, called forth by the urgency of the moment and the desire to be remembered.


Artists: Shafic Abboud, Yvette Achkar, Etel Adnan, Farid Aouad, Dia al-Azzawi, Alfred Basbous, Joseph Basbous, Michel Basbous, Assadour Bezdikian, Huguette Caland, Rafic Charaf, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Georges Doche, Simone Fattal, Laure Ghorayeb, Paul Guiragossian, Farid Haddad, John Hadidian, Jumana Bayazid El-Hussein, Dorothy Salhab Kazemi, Helen El-Khal, Jean Khalifé, Simone Baltaxé Martayan, Ibrahim Marzouk, Jamil Molaeb, Fateh al-Moudarres, Nicolas A. Moufarrege, Mehdi Moutashar, Aref El Rayess, Mahmoud Said, Adel al-Saghir, Hashim Samarchi, Nadia Saikali, Mona Saudi, Juliana Seraphim, Cici Sursock, Khalil Zgaib, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige