The Baghdad Museum set to reopen

A glimmer of good news from Iraq, where cultural heritage has sustained so much damage. Martin Bailey reports for the Art Newspaper that the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad could reopen as soon as next year. The museum (and other in Iraq) were shuttered during the 1991 Gulf War, and have only intermittently reopened in the subsequent two decades.

The main obstacle given to reopening the Baghdad museum is the lack of a new entrance building, needed to strengthen security and provide facilities, such as a café. Initially it was to be a replica of the Ishtar Gate at Babylon, but this idea was dropped as it was thought to be too gimmicky. Building work has now started on a more conventional entrance building. The tense security situation in Baghdad has also contributed to the decade-long delay. Most of the Baghdad museum’s curatorial and administrative staff of 130 are working on a database of the collection, which Eden said numbers more than 500,000 objects (around half are antiquities and the remainder individual coins). Only 50,000 items have been added to the database after years of work, so at this rate it will take many decades to complete. The labelling of antiquities in the galleries is rudimentary and needs improving.

And there are even plans to convert one of Saddam Hussein’s many palaces to a new museum with antiquities and exhibits describing Sumer, Babylon and Ashur.

The first phase of the building work involving the palace’s exterior and installing security measures was completed a year ago, but the second phase has been delayed because the lengthy process of electing a new governor for Basra province has slowed down the tender process. Qahtan Al Abeed said that the museum’s interior should be completed in a year.