Collecting Beirut: Launch of the Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte Heft XVIII/4 Winter 2024

Beirut is one of those places in the world that seems to capture international attention only when it is shaken by terrible events.

When the idea for this issue of the Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte was conceived, the capital of Lebanon was still grappling with the aftermath of a massive explosion that had devastated its port and brought death and destruction to the entire city.

The city's museums, galleries, libraries, and archives suffered significant damage.

However, fueled by the enthusiasm and resilience of curators, librarians, archivists, scholars, and funders, these institutions managed to protect their collections and continued to make them accessible to the public.

In doing so, they preserved a rich cultural heritage spanning from Phoenician artifacts to contemporary painting, and from Ottoman manuscripts to the archives of the vibrant Arabic intellectual life of the 20th century.

But what does it mean to collect in a city haunted by crisis, terror, and war? How are state and private actors interconnected?

And what drives individuals to invest in culture and history when survival is at stake? Even as this volume went to print this summer, no one could have anticipated how pressing these questions would be, now that it is published.

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