TAP’s Database of Public Art Practices in Lebanon

After years of hard work, exciting research, and painstaking organization, TAP is thrilled to finally be releasing its Database of Public Art Practices in Lebanon. Born out of a 2015 research project, the database is a comprehensive archive of public art projects that have taken place in Lebanon from 1980 to present day. Projects listed range from public sculpture to participatory art with over 400 entries classified and tagged according to type and temporality. The process of this research and categorization opened up a discourse around what it means to practice art in public and how these practices are archived, collected, and preserved. 

We aim for this Database to be the starting point for more discursive and analytical conversations and cross-disciplinary research on cultural policies, artistic practices, and the public realm as a social framework. What does it mean to practice art outside, in the presence of people, in collaboration with communities, and in response to a certain socio-political climate? And while we offer no definitive answer to this, we hope that our repository of information serves both as a virtual time-traveling museum and an important source of information for further research projects and knowledge production.

The TAP team would like to thank our extended family of colleagues and supporters without whom this project would not have seen the light: Walid Abu Saifan, Sarah Daher, Ahmad Deeb, Zara Fournier, Melissa Ghazale, Hanaa Ismail, Joyce Joumaa, Raafat Majzoub and the many artists and institutions who were generous enough to share their archives with us.

This project was made possible with funds from the Roberto Cimetta Fund and Culture Resource.

Disclaimer
The research has been carried out individually, exhausting public and private archives within our reach. If you are the author of an artwork and would like to add information we might have missed, please reach out to us on together@temporaryartplatform.com