Thursday 19th April 2018, 5.45pm
MBI Al Jaber Building, London Middle East Institute, SOAS

Telling Stories in Basrah: a New Museum for Iraq

(Co-hosted by BISI and the Friends of Basrah Museum)

Dr. Paul Collins, Jaleh Hearn Curator of Ancient Near East, Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

The Friends of Basrah Museum will be introduced by Mrs Joan Porter MacIver, CPF Grant UK Project Co-ordinator.

With the support of the London based charity, Friends of Basrah Museum, and a major grant from the Cultural Protection Fund, a former palace of Saddam Hussein has been restored as the new Basrah Museum. After 8 years of work, the first of three gallery spaces was officially opened in September 2016. This lecture will explore the on-going work at the Museum and how the institution will play a significant role in helping to foster sustainable development of antiquity, cultural heritage and the humanities in the post-conflict Middle East.

Paul Collins is Jaleh Hearn Curator of the Ancient Near East in the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, and voluntary Chair of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq (BISI). He has worked previously as a curator in the Middle East Department of the British Museum and the Ancient Near Eastern Art Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

You can download a pdf flyer for this lecture.

A full schedule of forthcoming lectures is available here.

In order to reserve a seat for the lecture, please email [email protected] as seating is limited.

Please note that the views expressed by the speakers in this lecture series should not be interpreted as views held by the MBI Al Jaber Foundation.