Afghan National Museum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Founded in the 1920s, the Afghan National Museum (also called Kabul Museum) is a place for storage and appreciation of old Afghan items of interest. It is a two-story building located in the historic city of Kabul, Afghanistan. Its collection was once one of the finest in Central Asia with 100,000 items dated back several millennia, but in August and September 1996 the museum was ransacked during the rule of the Taliban. In 2003, the international community invested US$350,000 to fix the building. It was re-inaugurated on September 29, 2004 by interim president Hamid Karzai, housing 2,500 artifacts.
Many treasures of ivory are stored there, as also are antiquities from Kushan, early Buddhism, and early Islam.
In November of 2004, archaeologists discovered a treasure trove of over a hundred crates of historic items from the museum, secreted away under the Presidential palace and in other locations, presumably by the museum staff to protect it from looting. Among these items are a large collection of coins, some thousands of years old, from nearly every civilization, illustrating Kabul's importance as an ancient trade center. A full cataloguing of this discovery is still ongoing, but the gold collection has recently gone on tour.
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[edit] New Afghan National Museum
A new Afghan National Museum, designed by Dr. Hisham N. Ashkouri of ARCADD, Inc., including a Library and Cultural Center, has been proposed to the Afghan government. The new complex is to be located within the new City of Light Development in or around the Old City of Kabul. The concept plan of the New National Museum is a complex that will house, for the first time in the history of Afghanistan, the national collection within one complex, with displays ranging from prehistoric artifacts from the region and items of historic significance up through works from contemporary artists and artisans. Various wings will be devoted to different regions, historic settlements and cultures, representing the full spectrum of Afghan life and the influences both within and without the country, as well as its influence on world culture. The Museum will also act as the educational resource for national Afghan and international scholars and students as well as become a research based institution interactive with local and international academic programs. State of the art preservation, restoration, research and security facilities will be incorporated into the museum design.
The Library is slated to house one million volumes, expandable to two million, and will differ from that of a National Library in the fact that its collection supports the museum collection, and its subject collection is in direct relation with those areas conserved by the museum.
The Cultural Center will incorporate a 1,200 seat performance space, three adjustable-volume lecture halls and a number of seminar rooms.
[edit] Afghan Museum in Exile
About 3,000 objects had been preserved since 1999/2000 in the Afghan Museum in Exile in Bubendorf, Switzerland, which received most of its exhibits as donation from exiled afghan citizens. Reportedly, objects have been brought from Afghanistan between 1998 and 2001 with consent of the Taliban and Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. It was dissolved in late 2006, as UNESCO decided that the repatriation of the objects to Afghanistan was safe then. The objects were presented in Kabul in March, 2007.
