Bshara Nassar is the founder and director of the Museum of the Palestinian People (MPP) in Washington, DC. After arriving in Washington, D.C., in 2011, Bshara was struck by the numerous monuments and museums that proudly tell America’s story—and even honor the stories of other nations. However, he felt a deep void because there was no museum that told his story as a Palestinian. This realization led him to create the Nakba Museum Project.
Founded in 2014, the Nakba Museum Project provides a safe environment to share the stories of Palestinians through art, storytelling, and performance. Bshara, whose voice was silenced in Palestine, reclaimed it in the United States through this project. “Nakba” (meaning “catastrophe” in Arabic) refers to the more than 700,000 Palestinians who lost their homes in 1948 and symbolizes an ongoing reality for Palestinians under Israeli occupation.
Bshara led the initiative to coordinate the setup of traveling exhibits in locations across the country. Four years later, he managed to assemble a board, negotiate a museum building, and raise funds toward developing a permanent museum “Museum of the Palestinian People” in Washington, D.C. His goal has always been to deepen the conversations on who the Palestinian people are by empowering Palestinians to tell their own stories in the United States.
Nassar is a third generation of the Nassar family who owns an internationally known educational and environmental farm “The tent of Nations” on the hilltops of Bethlehem. He earned his undergraduate degree from Bethlehem University (Palestine) in 2010. He earned his master’s degree from Eastern Mennonite University (Harrisonburg, VA).
