Wed 6 Jan 2021 00.00 EST
Through the entrance is a version of Guido Reni’s 17th-century portrait of St John the Baptist, blown to shreds. Nearby, a chandelier lies splattered on the ground where it fell. Mirrors are cracked, paintings ruptured, and roofs in some rooms half-caved in.
Beirut is slowly rebuilding from the explosion on 4 August that destroyed much of its eastern seafront neighbourhoods and tore through galleries and hotel lobbies where some of Lebanon’s most renowned art was on display.
A new exhibition in the city seeks not to put artworks together again but to remake them, despite the gashes in canvasses and grazes in sculptured stone. Wounded Art, a collection of works damaged and destroyed by the blast, opened this month in the city’s Villa Audi, a mosaic museum that was itself badly hit.