Sursock Museum

The Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock Museum was born of a bequest. The collector Nicolas Sursock, who died in 1952, left his Achrafieh mansion to the people of Lebanon as a museum for ancient and modern art from Lebanon, the Arab world and beyond. After a nine-year delay the museum opened on 18 November 1961 with the Salon d'Automne, an open call that introduced artists such as Shafic Abboud, Yvette Achkar, Etel Adnan, Saloua Raouda Choucair and Paul Guiragossian. It describes itself as a private institution with a public mission, and it stayed open through most of the Lebanese Civil War.

Between 2008 and 2015 the architects Jean-Michel Wilmotte and Jacques Aboukhaled expanded the building from 1,500 to 8,500 square metres, adding four floors beneath the garden with a 650 square metre exhibition hall, an auditorium, a research library and a conservation studio. Today the museum holds a permanent collection of some 1,600 works and objects spanning the late nineteenth century to the early 2000s, and runs collection displays, special exhibitions, symposia and publications. Admission is free.