The Lost Paintings opening is just a few days away at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.
We are delighted to welcome visitors to Bristol for the next chapter of The Lost Paintings: A Prelude to Return, on view from June 19 – September 27, 2026.
What began as a search for the lost works of Palestinian-Lebanese artist Maroun Tomb has evolved into an international exhibition bringing together 53 contemporary Palestinian and diaspora artists, each responding to a painting lost during the Nakba of 1948.
We invite you to experience this powerful journey of memory, loss, resilience, and return at the beautiful Bristol Museum & Art Gallery. A guided tour is one of the most compelling ways to experience the exhibition—offering insight into the remarkable story behind the project, the rediscovery of a lost chapter of Palestinian art history, and the journey that brought this exhibition together.
Join us to explore the stories, and artistic responses that make this exhibition such a rich and meaningful experience.
As always, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to all 53 Lost Paintings artists for taking this journey with us. We are deeply thankful to our hosts, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, for welcoming the project, and to our sponsors, the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland and Kone Foundation, whose support has made this work possible.
We look forward to welcoming you to Bristol.
A reimagining of an exhibition lost to the 1948 Nakba.
Noor Abed • Abed Abdi • Hala Abo Freh • Ghassan Yousef Abulaban• Tala Abunuwar • Ruba Al-Faraouna • Dalia Ali • Faten Abu Ali • Ola Alkrenawi • Sama Alshaibi • Aysha E Arar • Doaa Badran • Nasrin Abu Baker • Joanna Bararkat • Jacqueline Béjani • Doris Bittar • Benji Boyadgian • Muhammad Nour Elkhairy • Faissal El-Malak • Ashraf Fawakhry • Michael Halak • Aya Abu Hawash • Raed Issa • Iman Jabrah • Khaled Jarrar • Juhaina Habibi Kandalaft • Mado Kelleyan • Dina Nazmi Khorchid • Bayan Kiwan • Noel Maghathe • Yara Kassem Mahajena • Maria Saleh Mahameed • Souad Naser Makhoul • Sliman Mansour • Sara Mraish • Zohdy Qadry • Antoine Elias Raffoul • Ridikkuluz • Fatima Abu Roomi • Steve Sabella • Razan AlSalah • Nora Sayyad • Farid Abu Shakra • Samah Shihadi • Nardeen Srouji Dalleh Tarabey • Fouad Tomb • Lorena Tomb • Sandra Tomb • Mary Tuma • Sharif Waked • Ronen Zien • Manar Zuabi
Abed Abdi’s Featured Artwork at the Exhibition: Refugees: Naksa Trilogy No. 1
Woodcut print on fine thick paper, 28 cm x 20 cm (16 in x 13 in), 2021
After researching Maroun Tomb’s career and education, Abdi found parallels: from the fact that they are artists whose homes are just blocks apart in Wadi al-Nisnas neighborhood and that they have a mutual interest in graphic etching on wood, copper and zinc. In fact, Tomb had taken courses with the Jewish artist Hermann Struck, who was a leader in this practice. Therefore, Abdi chose to respond with a reprint of his pre-existing work which was born out of the Naksa Day (day of the set-back) to memorialize the displacement of the Palestinian people that took place at the close of the Six-Day War in June 1967 when Israel reigned victorious and occupied the Palestinian-populated West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Syrian Golan Heights.
Abed Abdi is a Palestinian visual artist, and the chief curator of the Art Colony, who resides and works in Haifa. Abdi was just six years old when the Nakba took place, forcing his family to relocate to refugee camps in present-day Syria and Lebanon until his father’s family reunification request was fulfilled in 1951, bringing them back to Haifa. Abdi graduated in 1972 from the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, Germany. Abdi is most known for his works representing the Nakba and the refugee experience, including the Land Day Monument, which was the first memorial in historical Palestine commemorating the victims of land expropriation protests, in collaboration with his friend and colleague Gershon Knispel. Abdi’s accolades include the Anna Lindh Foundation and the highest honors in Palestine and Israel and his works can be found in institutional collections such as the British Museum, the Tel Aviv Museum and more.
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