VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Following the terrorist attack at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis last March, Seifallah Lasram, the city’s mayor, has entered into a cross-cultural partnership with the mayor of Turin, Italy, effective October 2016, according to a report in The Art Newspaper. The attack on the Tunisian capital, which has been credited to either ISIS or a local al-Qaeda group, killed twenty-one people (four of whom were Italian citizens) and injured fifty others.
This Mediterranean alliance will involve the organization of exchanges and joint exhibitions between both the Bardo and the collection of Islamic art housed at the Museo di Arte Orientale in Turin. Farther south, Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is also engaged in negotiations to share works, though museum director Eike Schmidt says “plans are in a very early stage.”
In more definite news, the Sicilian island of Lampedusa will be showcasing works from the Bardo’s collection this spring in an exhibition titled “Carthage Changes Europe,” in honor of the Bardo’s Carthage gallery of Roman sculptures, which were restored this past November.