Reviving cosmopolitan Beirut : a case study of three modernist art spaces

Prior to the Lebanese Civil War, Beirut boasted a vibrant art scene. The war took its toll on the city's infrastructure, leading to the relocation and shutdown of the existing galleries and art institutions. Since the war, art in Beirut is being revived along different tracks, in tandem with its complex geopolitical identity. My thesis argues that artists, gallerists, and architects collaboratively assert a specific message and image of Lebanon, by creating a nostalgia appealing to certain moments in Beirut's past (or the prospective future). I track the architecture of the different art galleries and institutions and supplement it with the kind of art they exhibit, to create preliminary categories, each vying for its own identity of Lebanon. In the thesis, I choose the modernist architecture category as the emblematic postcard image of prewar Beirut, featuring the modernist architecture that endured the war and came to represent Beirut's cultural Renaissance.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Maamari, Daniella Samira.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Nasser Rabbat and Caroline Jones.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129878

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/129878