Exhibitions, Ethics, and the Cultural Afterlives of Violence
by Rijin Sahakian
The following essay is part of a forthcoming volume on Iraq
In the initial years after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, one of the only sites that remained
open to view artwork was the on-campus gallery at the University of Baghdad’s College of Art.
The nearly one hundred galleries that once populated Baghdad had closed, the city’s museums
were still shuttered from the initial invasion’s looting, and, with an occupation still very much in
place, there was little to no investment in the arts. 1 Early reports documented the pillaging of
Iraq’s museum holdings in the absence of protection, in stark contrast to the heavy security
afforded to oil infrastructure. 2 Later years would reveal not only the looting and smuggling of
high value objects, from modern art to ancient pottery, but even the use of Iraq’s most heralded
cultural sites as coalition military bases. Not even ancient Babylon was off-limits. The
consequences were summed up by one headline in The Guardian, 3 “Months of war that ruined
centuries of history.”