Friday, November 8, 2024

11:30 - 12:00

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Details

Sophie Szynaka, The British Museum, London, UK This presentation will give a unique insight, from a Registrar’s perspective, into the Beirut Glass Research Project, a successful collaboration between the British Museum and the Archaeological Museum in Beirut, part of the American University of Beirut. On the evening of 4 August 2020, a man-made port explosion devastated the city of Beirut. The Archaeological Museum’sRoman and Islamic glass gallery’s collection of archaeologically significant glass vessels, which had survived for 2,000 years, was shattered in a matter of moments. However, after the explosion, Curators at the Archaeological Museum managed to identify eight vessels that were salvageable and could be reconstructed. The British Museum secured vital funding to bring hundreds of fragments from these eight shattered glass vessels from Beirut to the UK to be sensitively reconstructed by the British Museum’sConservation Department and a Trainee Conservator from Beirut. The eight reconstructed glass vessels were then exhibited in the British Museum for three months, before they returned home to Beirut for public display in the permanent glass gallery at the Archaeological Museum in Beirut. The talk will tell the story of the journey of these vessels and how the loans administration was tailored specifically for them. The project’s key milestones will be explained step by step with particular focus on the central role of international collaboration and the extraordinary efforts of colleagues in Beirut and London to preserve and share knowledge of one ofthe world’s richest collections of ancient glassware.

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Speaker