A Lebanese Statue for Rachid Karamé

In the night from Saturday to Sunday, without an official ceremony, the half-length statue of Prime Minister Rachid Karamé was replaced, on the roundabout that bears his name (formerly known as « Fardan »), by a new bronze statue designed by Antoine Berberi, at the request of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, who was dissatisfied with the old statue, the work of an Italian sculptor and judged to bear little resemblance. The plinth carries an inscription recalling that Rachid Karamé lived from 1921 to 1987. The article recalls that Berberi won, in 1964, the first prize of the Saïd Akl gold medal awarded by the Paris Institute of Fine Arts, and that the statue was made entirely in his Dbayeh studio.

Original article in Arabic.