Beirut and the Golden Sixties

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 outbreakof the Lebanese Civil War.

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.