Birzeit University Museum is an innovative art space located at the heart of the university campus. It was established in 2005 as the manifestation of a decades-long interest of the university in diverse cultural practices.
Birzeit University Museum (BZUM) produces and promotes a wide range of contemporary art as a way to provoke intellectual activity and to counter stagnation. BZUM works to generate a political and social debate in order to pave the way for an alternative outlook to the future in Palestine. Through its multidisciplinary and cross-cutting approach, it offers long-lasting thematic exhibitions as instrumental tools for critical debate and brainstorming among youth. Guided by its social responsibility, BZUM is developing the model for a museum that is rooted and critically engaged in its local context. It reaches out to university students, staff, and faculty, to schools, and to the local community with its three pioneering programs: Exhibitions, Collections, and Education.
The Birzeit University Museum produces several periodic exhibitions annually that serve as platforms for students in particular, and for the community in general, to look at and participate in productions that are various in content and theme. These exhibitions serve as unconventional tools, available for students, faculty members, and BZU staff to learn and inquire and to stimulate debate. BZUM also aims to make room for artists and cultural practitioners in general to generate and shape a debate and to work closely with the university community. Our exhibitions include:
Cities Exhibition: A biannual exhibition, considered as a space for the local community at large to communicate through interactive artistic work with Palestinian cities and to explore current social, economic, and spatial changes. Each version of the exhibition is dedicated to a Palestinian city: “Jerusalem Our Home” in 2009; “Ramallah – Fairest of them all?” in 2010; “Between Ebal and Gerzim” (Nablus), 2011 to 2012; “Jericho Beyond the Celestial and Terrestrial,” 2012 to 2013. Preparations for the fifth edition are underway, scheduled to open in the fall of 2016, and dedicated to Gaza city.
Beyond Aesthetics: A series of annual exhibitions produced in three versions so far. First, it depicted the unique ethnographic collection that contains the Dr. Tawfiq Canaan Amulets and Talismans Collections, then a Costumes Collection, and finally the Jewelry Collection. In the latter two, the museum presented artifacts of an alternative artistic practice for the common reading of the material cultural heritage, exhibiting them with a nostalgic perspective and giving them the sense of a communal national identity. Currently, the fourth edition is being prepared, scheduled to open in March 2016 and curated by artist Vera Tamari.
Current Exhibition: Floating Free by Bashir Makhoul.
We invite you to visit the first solo exhibition in the Arab world of Bashir Makhoul, who is originally from the Galilee but now resides in the United Kingdom. It represents a state of “return” and explores what it means for an artist – and émigré by choice – to enact a form of return though art work. Makhoul’s works are hosted in partnership with Al-Hoash Gallery and in cooperation with the British Council, and are funded by the European Union and the A.M Qattan Foundation. The exhibition will be open until 31 December 2015.
Upcoming activities:
During October and November and as part of the Artists’ Talks program, the Museum is organizing a series of lectures by Palestinian artist Samia Halabi, who will speak at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Al-Najah National University on October 28 and 29, 2015; at the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah on November 9, 2015.; and at Birzeit University on November 12, 2015.
» Contact us via Tel. 02-298 2976 and at bzumuseum@birzeit.edu, and follow our activities at www.museum.birzeit.edu and on Facebook under “Birzeit University Museum.”
