Check Out Palestine's New Open Air Museum

Palestinian history buffs are creating the world's largest open-air museum in a bid to commemorate the country's troubled past.

The Palestinian Museum, branded 'a safe place for unsafe ideas', is based in Birzeit, near the city of Ramallah, and aims to be the world's largest open air museum by the end of next year.

The museum's head curator Jack Persekian told the Electronica Intifada: “The museum is the brainchild of the Welfare Association.

“They were thinking back in 1997 to commemorate the Nakba (the expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians leading up to and after Israel’s establishment) on its fiftieth anniversary in 1998. And they thought of the concept of the Palestinian Museum of Memory.”

The team is inviting Palestinians to participate in its opening show, Never Part, through the museum’s website, where people can submit stories about the objects they have kept and cherished.

However, Persekian claims that the project will break down the confines of a traditional museums and instead become an installation for Palestinians across the globe.

He added: “Gradually the idea started evolving and one major component was to not just think about the museum as a location and a building, but to think about this museum as an institution that can serve Palestinians wherever they are.”

“We know that more than half of the Palestinians are outside of Palestine. So we started thinking of the museum as a hub with branches and partnerships in other places, particularly in places where Palestinians themselves cannot access this site in Birzeit,” including Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon.

“[It] won’t be this one body of work, but it will move and transform as it travels from one place to another.”

The Palestinian Museum has already established partnerships with existing institutions both in Palestine and across the globe with the opening exhibition, due to launch in the coming weeks.

For more information visit their Facebook page.