The Ethnographic and Art Museum
In 1995, Mrs. Laila Kanaan and her two sisters, Nada and Basma Kanaan, donated to Birzeit University a distinguished set of Palestinian veils that belonged to their late father, Dr. Tawfiq Kanaan. After the university acquired this collection, it was necessary to preserve it. Therefore, Layla allocated a room in the main library building on the second floor to keep this collection in. Vera Tamari, a Faculty of Fine Arts lecturer, was appointed chair of the founding committee. One of the most important tasks undertaken by Tamari was to preserve the Kanaan collection and some other art collections in the university's possession, such as a collection of artworks. A few years later, a small gallery was opened in the Al-Maktoum Building, dedicated to organizing art exhibitions for some Palestinian artists. It displayed some of the artworks of architecture students who studied with Dr. Vera Tamari. In 2005, the university dedicated an entire floor to establishing the Ethnographic and Art Museum, on an area of 400 m in the new university annex.
The Ethnographic and Art Museum is a pioneering art space that promotes visual arts within the Palestinian community through various Exhibitions, Training, and Education programs. The Virtual Gallery is an online archive for Palestinian art practice. It offers a window into contemporary art within the Palestinian context on the local and international levels.
The virtual museum includes an electronic library, scenes from exhibitions, artists' works, lectures and conferences, and an information base on the rare art and ethnographic collections held by the university and others. Its launch in 2005 aims to be a window for contemporary Palestinian art in Arabic and English. The museum is considered a crucial reference for artistic practices in the Palestinian context, as it includes a database of rare artistic and ethnographic collections held by the university. Its establishment was a result of the siege imposed on the Palestinians and the construction of the separation wall, as the isolation and restrictions on movement that limited the possibility of communication between the various communities in Palestine and abroad created a situation in which the virtual space became the only way for obtaining and disseminating information. It turned into a primary portal that crossed borders and physical barriers.
In 2011, the ethnographic art museum was formally merged with the virtual gallery under the name of the Birzeit University Museum. It was planned to transform the university museum with its various programs into learning experiences and a collective studio to include students, professors, artists, and others to create, acquire, and exchanging knowledge in various fields.
The museum aims to establish a vision that leads the museum, and the university to develop and encourage culture and art among university students, and the Palestinian community, and create a tangible space to promote items and art collections.
The importance of the existence of Ethnographic Museum and the Virtual Gallery, is among the essential artistic projects that contributed to introducing the local Palestinian community to the local and international art scene, in a period marked by the siege and the difficulty of movement imposed by the Israeli occupation. The museum was one of the first professionally equipped art spaces at Birzeit University, which served the Palestinian public, including thousands of students. The museum organized professional exhibitions through an annual program, which made the museum one of the main characters in the cultural arena. As for the museum's vision, it aims to expand the boundaries of Palestinian artistic practices permanently and continuously.
The mission is to produce and promote contemporary artistic practices as a form of creative knowledge that provides the tools necessary to effect social change, and to create a cultural and critical dialogue rooted in the local context while keeping pace with the international art scene. This museum is considered one of the most important Palestinian museums, which is explicitly located at the campus of BZU in Palestine; where it was opened to preserve a collection of veils, and antiquities that were owned by Dr. Tawfiq Kanaan, where those involved in art came up with the idea of establishing this museum to preserve those groups from being lost, in addition to maintaining part of the Palestinian cultural and historical heritage.
The museum was the center of many universities, including Birzeit University. In addition to that, it achieved great fame and became an attraction destination for many visitors from inside and outside the city areas, and it is constantly seeking to develop and expand Palestinian practices and activities, especially artistic ones; this is because it is considered one of the most important forms of creative knowledge that help provide the essential tools necessary to bring about social changes. In addition, the museum aims to create critical and cultural dialogues in line with the events of the international art scene. The most important department that runs the Birzeit University Museum they are affiliated with, is the Virtual Gallery at the University, which mainly aspires to highlight and disseminate arts and culture through social networks and the Internet. It also provides information related to Palestinian art and its development, in addition to being under the management of the Ethnographic and Art Museum at Birzeit University.