Michael Barry is a member of the Afghanculturemuseum.org Scientific Committee and Lecturer Medieval and Modern Islamic Cultures, Princeton University.
Afghanculturemuseum.org is a tool which allows to gather various elements of the Afghan Heritage, nowadays scattered or mishandled. A tool to contribute to the valuation of the Afghan Culture and Identity.
This virtual museum will function as a kind of multimedia encyclopaedia of Afghan civilization.With two primary aims:
To help Afghanistan reclaim its own history, and the dignity of its rich tapestry of civilizations. This will especially appeal to Afghan youth, offering keys to their identity, their pride of heritage, and their desire to rebuild their own future. To enable a much larger public to discover one of humanity’s most ancient civilizations, and its contribution to human history.
This will be the only major museum which has no specific physical location. However, we have asked the world-famous, visionary architect Yona Friedman to design and “build” a virtual structure. With access to Afghan collections which are now physically scattered in many museums and private collections, we will bring these all together for the first time into a beautiful and impressive, very interactive multimedia presentation. Thanks to our international, multi-disciplinary, and scientific committee, every art object will have its own geographic, ethnological, and historic information.
There will also be a panoramic table which situates these objects in the larger context of European, Mideastern, and Asian civilizations. The educational aspect will also be emphasized, with commentaries available in four languages : English, French, Dari, and Pashto. It is a museum which will always be open, and accessible from anywhere.
