This is a preface-book. A preface made up of other prefaces. The ones published in the various editions of the catalogue of the Damascus National Museum, from 1919 to the end of the last century – prefaces which can be found here, not only annotated, but also accompanied by rare archival material and historical chronicles. It is therefore a republishing project, in the form of a palimpsest, or an untimely guide through the lives of the Museum and its catalogue. As if to observe, alike a structuralist analysis, “the variations of the myth” or the multiple body. The Damascus National Museum is approached by a constellation of historical dates but also of micro-histories and iconographic survivals. Or how history, in the broader sense and including in the tragic sense, shines through the walls of the museum, its collections, its storage; its national and intimate representations, its real perimeter as well as its nomadic tendency.

Photography : Maxime Leyvastre ©