A contemporary art scene out of all proportion to the country's size, run largely without any state support at all.
Lebanon produces contemporary art, film and writing at a rate entirely out of proportion to a country of six million people, and Beirut has been one of the significant art cities of the region for thirty years.
It does this with almost no state funding, no national contemporary art museum, and a set of institutions that are private, precarious and repeatedly rebuilt.
Why the work is the way it is
A generation of Lebanese artists who came of age during or immediately after the civil war — Walid Raad, Akram Zaatari, Rabih Mroué, Lamia Joreige, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Marwan Rechmaoui — built a body of work around the archive, the document, memory and the unreliability of both.
That is not a coincidence. In a country with an amnesty law, no agreed account of the war, 17,000 people still missing and no history curriculum covering 1975 to 1990, the question of what actually happened and who gets to say so is not academic.
Walid Raad’s Atlas Group — an archive of documents about the Lebanese wars, some found and some fabricated, presented without distinguishing between them — is probably the best-known single body of work to come out of this, and it is essentially a rigorous argument about the impossibility of a reliable record.
The institutions
Ashkal Alwan — the Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, founded 1993, which runs Home Works, a recurring forum on cultural practices that is one of the important events of its kind in the region, and a free postgraduate art programme.
Beirut Art Center, a non-profit exhibition space in Jisr el Wati.
The Arab Image Foundation, which holds hundreds of thousands of photographs from across the Arab world and its diaspora and is one of the genuinely important archives in the region. It was damaged in the 2020 blast and its collection was rescued and stabilised by volunteers.
Dar el-Nimer for arts and culture, in Clemenceau, with a strong programme on Palestine and the region.
Sursock Museum — see its own page — the closest thing to a public museum of modern art.
The commercial galleries
Sfeir-Semler, in a large industrial space in Karantina, showing major regional and international artists — the most internationally significant commercial gallery in Beirut.
Marfa’, Galerie Tanit, Agial, Saleh Barakat Gallery and others, scattered across Clemenceau, Hamra, Mar Mikhael and Karantina.
Saleh Barakat Gallery in Clemenceau, in a converted 1960s cinema, is the one to try if you have time for one.
Film and music
Lebanese cinema is strong and travels — Nadine Labaki, Ziad Doueiri, Mounia Akl — and Metropolis Cinema, the arthouse institution, has moved and reopened more than once.
Live music ranges from the Beiteddine and Baalbeck summer festivals — international programmes in Roman and Ottoman settings — to underground electronic nights in Karantina warehouses. Beirut & Beyond is the independent music festival.
Practical
Most galleries are free. Opening hours are limited and unreliable.
The spaces are scattered — Karantina, Jisr el Wati, Mar Mikhael, Clemenceau, Hamra — and you will need taxis.
Check listings before setting out. The scene has been severely affected by the economic collapse and the 2020 blast, and premises change.
If you have half a day and one interest, Sfeir-Semler in Karantina plus Sursock is the strongest pairing.
