Imagining Lebanon with Islamic Art: The 1974 Exhibition at the Nicolas Sursock Museum

Abstract

Focusing on the first exhibition of Islamic art in Lebanon, organized by the Nicolas Sursock Museum in 1974, this article shows how the construction and the operationalization of the concept Islamic art overlapped with postcolonial endeavors to foster national identity. By closely examining the making of the art exhibition and tracing material histories intersecting in Beirut, it elicits constructions of the national, the secular, and the spiritual via the notion of art.
It contributes to the growing scholarship on the historiography of Islamic art, regional museums, and nation-building in the second half of the 20th century.