My Mother’s Extraordinary Life in Beirut of the Late 50s & Early 60s | Venetia Porter

An eclectic and vibrant conversation with Venetia Porter — former curator of Islamic and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art at the British Museum — about her iconic mother Thea Porter's life across Palestine, Syria and Beirut in the 50s, her own work at the British Museum, and the purpose of curation. Reflecting on an extraordinary moment in time when Thea Porter was a fixture of Beirut’s creative circles, Venetia shares what it was like to unearth her mother’s personal archive of photos, letters and memories from that era. Moving on to her own work at the British Museum, she sheds light on what she believes the role of curation and the curator should be, what it means to build a “universal” museum, and whether it’s possible to establish this kind of institution in the Arab world. Finally, Venetia offers insight on how museums are responding to the increasingly charged question of how they obtained the objects in their collections and how she navigated her position as a non-Muslim when curating an exhibition about the history of the Hajj.