Faisal Abbas 
“Open Walls” is the title chosen by the “American University” in Beirut for an exhibition that was opened last Wednesday, in the Gallery located inside its campus, through which it provides works from its private artistic collection, in addition to works from the groups: “Gibran Tarzi Foundation”, “Beirut Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art” (Pima), and “TAP”, and continues until March of the next year.
The exhibition aims, according to those in charge of it, to “enhance the dialogue between historical eras, schools and multiple artistic traditions, and artists belonging to different generations, in an attempt to facilitate the exchange between institutions, bodies and artistic works in Lebanon and the region.”
The permanent technical group of the “American University” in Beirut is a product of many efforts, as the first attempt to establish it dates back to the beginning of the 1970s, when the technical hall that quickly was damaged by student protests was opened in 1974, against the high installments, where students occupied the “College Hall” building, and then the Lebanese Civil War began, the following year, which lasted for fifteen years. The situation remained as it was until 2011, when Samir Salibi donated a collection of paintings signed by Lebanese plastic artists such as Khalil Salibi (1870 – 1928), Sulaiba Duwaihi (1915 – 1994), Omar Onsi (1901 – 1969), and Caesar Jameel (1898-1958).
It includes works for Khalil Salibi, Sulaibibi Duwaihi, Gibran Tarzi and others
The exhibition illuminates, through the Gibran Tarzi Foundation group, the legacy of the artist (1944-2010), which was born in Damascus for an ancient family of craftsmen, before moving to Lebanon in 1959. Tarzi was famous for his contributions to engineering engineering art and modern Arab art, and he integrated into his traditional works and methods of modern formation. The exhibition also provides a book on the artist entitled “Gibran Tarzi: a biography of the artistic artistic creativity” by Iraqi researcher and critic Khudair Al -Zaidi.
Among the most prominent portraits included in the exhibition is one of Ahmed Faris Al -Shadiaq, signed by Habib Sorour (1860 – 1938), in which the scholar appears holding “Al -Jawa’b”; The newspaper that he founded in Egypt in 1881. And the last of the mayor of Beirut and the founder of the newspaper “The Fruits of Arts” in 1885, the reformer Abdel Qader Al -Qabbani, was accomplished by Mustafa Farrukh (1901-1957), and in which the classic style that transmits the features accurately, and mixes with Khalil Salibi’s central works in the exhibition, which reveals a clear impressionism in the transfer of the viewer. Natural, it also opens to the naked body of both men and women.
In addition to the plastic works, the “open walls” allow clips and video recordings, and books on the history and theories of art, and photographs, taken by Farid Al -Haddad, Marite Charlton and David Kawrani, we find most of them in black and white, and reflects aspects of Bals Street, located in the Ras Beirut area, including the campus of the university with its gap and its buildings, and the famous clock The arena is intermediaries.
