Following months of review and consideration, the Board of Trustees of BeMA: Beirut Museum of Art is pleased to announce the appointment of Lebanese-born architect Amale Andraos and WORKac, the firm she founded with Dan Wood in 2003, to design its future building. Beirut’s newest art museum, BeMA will be centrally located in the heart of Beirut, positioned on a charged and symbolic site in the city that once marked the dividing line in the Lebanese civil war, now to be transformed into a site of unification. The museum’s permanent collection will include modern and contemporary artworks from Lebanon, the Lebanese diaspora, and the wider region. As Dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), Amale Andraos is a global leader in the field.

 

The new 12,000-square-meter museum will feature 70 balconies arrayed as a vertical promenade that blends indoor and outdoor spaces to create an “open museum” for the city.

 

In the coming months, the museum will announce further details about its collections, programming, and collaboration with local and international cultural and artistic institutions. A Search Committee will shortly be appointed to initiate the recruitment of a museum director and other key positions.