AWARE: Yvette Achkar

AWARE Archives of Women Artists Research & Exhibitions published an entry on Yvette Achkar in late 2023, written by Nadia von Maltzahn: https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/yvette-achkar/

Thank you to everyone who has shared information on Yvette Achkar and images of her works, in particular the Sursock Museum Archives, BeMA, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Lina Fakhoury, Yasmine Nachabe Taan, Gregory Buchakjian and Greta Naufal, and to the editorial team at AWARE.

I had tried to receive direct feedback from Yvette Achkar’s family on the factual content of the draft text, as there is always some misrepresentation as statements get repeated from one biography to the next. Failing this, I have avoided using dates where I was not certain (for instance, her time studying at ALBA is variantly given as 1947-1951 and 1947-1952; the archivist at ALBA has records for her studying 1947-49, and said that she features on a fiche d’admission for the year 1950-51). I had read in a review that she got married in 1952, but she herself in an interview said that she got married at the age of 22, so I took out the reference to the year. The exact years she spent in Paris are also unclear to me (from the sources it seems 1962-1963), and where she studied.

One example of how information is repeated in written biographies without fact-checking is the years of her teaching, which is often stated as 1966-1988 for both ALBA and LU, whereas she continued teaching at ALBA much longer (even if with interruptions). According to Nicole Harfouche, she had already taught at ALBA in the early 1960s. Achkar’s exhibition at Gallery One in the 1960s is often given as 1965, whereas the exhibition reviews from the time all show that it took place in 1964.

These are just small examples of the challenges faced when writing a biography on the basis of incomplete or contradictory data.