Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World

This book, edited by two professors at the American University of Beirut, looks at collecting practices in the modern Arab world. The editors both work in paper disciplines (Sonja Mejcher-Atassi in Arabic studies including book arts, and John Pedro Schwartz in English literature and new media studies), so the book's museological vision includes archiving as well as the collection of objects. The book is divided into three sections. The first looks at local representations of modernity: al-nadha-al-'arabia, the fate of Lebanese antiquities, the Palestinian Amulet Collection at Birzeit University. The second looks at practices in collecting and historiography: the old-paper markets in Cairo, the reform of school history textbooks in Lebanon, the Beit Beirut project. The third looks at the movement from institutional to artistic practices of collecting: the formation of the Khalid Shoman Private Collection, high-income private collecting in the UAE, collecting modern Iraqi art, and a closing academic arts essay which tries to evoke the core issues of collecting in the region by looking at a short film about a buried message. This last writer, Walid Sadek (architecture and design, American University of Beirut, LB), sums up the core issues as possession and loss, the attempt to recover home and history, the search for the uncanny, and the problem that real words and objects so often cannot support the weight of history, territory, politics, dreams, and myth placed upon them. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Sonja Mejcher-Atassi is Assistant Professor in the Civilization Sequence Program at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. Her research focuses on modern Arabic literature and art, interarts studies and book art. John Pedro Schwartz is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the American University of Beirut, where he specializes in modern British and American literature.