After Decades of Looting, Mosul Museum Plans to Reopen

Established in 1952 and designed by modernist architect Mohamed Makiya, the Mosul Cultural Museum (MCM) is the second largest in Iraq and residential to huge collections of prehistoric, Assyrian, Hatran, and Islamic artifacts that chronicle the historical past of northern Iraq and its peoples. This week, officers unveiled long-awaited plans for the restoration of the constructing, which is slated to reopen in 2026.

In 2014, the MCM suffered in depth harm and looting underneath the seize of the Islamic State (IS). Nevertheless, this occasion was not the primary occasion the establishment’s collections had been in danger. Through the Iraq Battle, the MCM despatched its collections to the Nationwide Museum of Iraq in Baghdad for safekeeping. Sadly, when US troops invaded town in 2003, over 15,000 objects from that establishment had been looted, and plenty of others had been destroyed, in response to the museum’s web site. Though some objects had been recovered, the Nationwide Museum continues to be looking for lots of its stolen collections.

Through the IS’s 2014 seizure of the museum, greater than 28,000 books and uncommon manuscripts had been burned, in response to a latest press launch concerning the restoration venture. Many artifacts and artworks had been additionally looted, and several other main Assyrian works — together with three stone sculptures, some tablets engraved with cuneiform, and metallic plaque fragments — had been harmed or destroyed, in response to official reviews. Massive items that date again to the Neo-Assyrian interval had been lowered to mere fragments. And a bomb explosion left a big, gaping crater within the ground of the central Assyrian Gallery, the place a lot of the harm was concentrated. 

Since 2018, a world coalition of cultural establishments and organizations led by the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) has been working to restore and revitalize the museum. As a part of the restoration, officers say they plan to maintain a footprint of the harm completed to the Assyrian Gallery ground as a visual reminder of the devastating assault. 

Along with fixing the harm left by the IS, the coalition plans to make some much-needed updates to the constructing, together with reviving the backyard, growing the pure mild, and making the constructing general extra accessible and sustainable.

Coinciding with the restoration launch, museum officers additionally introduced a brand new exhibition, The Mosul Cultural Museum: From Destruction to Rehabilitation, on show within the MCM’s close by former house, the Royal Corridor, from Might 12 by June 1. The exhibition chronicles the historical past of the MCM and showcases the imaginative and prescient for its future by images, video, and 3D fashions. After June 1, the exhibition will transfer to museum backyard gates, the place it is going to be digitized for a trilingual panel format. For these unable to journey to Iraq, an internet model of the exhibition is out there.