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Mar 04 2014

Beirut Art Center Announces New Director

by The Editors

Maria Muracciole will head the Beirut Art Center, Lebanon’s first major nonprofit art space, which opened in 2009. Courtesy Beirut Art Center.

Beirut Art Center (BAC), a nonprofit space dedicated to contemporary art in Lebanon, appointed Marie Muracciole as its new director on February 20. BAC’s co-founders and directors, Sandra Dagher and Lamia Joreige, announced that they would relinquish their their five-year directorial post in January, promising to remain active as members on BAC’s board.

Muracciole is a Paris-based art historian and curator who was formely head of the cultural department at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume from 2006 to 2011. She subsequently held a professorship at Bordeaux’s École d’Enseignment Supériuer d’Art, focusing on cinema and video theory.

Working with artists such as Pierre Huyghe, Yto Barrada and Francis Alÿs, Muracciole has curated numerous group shows internationally. She has also published extensively, most recently editing “Écrits sur la Photographie 1974–1986” (2013), a collection of writings by the late photographer and theorist Allan Sekula.

As BAC’s first director after its original founders, Muracciole will be responsible for strengthening the center’s programming and forming new partnerships and collaborations with other organizations. Her tenure with BAC will commence on March 15.