Abigail's trip to Qatar

Abigail Harrison Moore and Mariam Al Mulla, a doctoral candidate in the School and and a curator in the Qatar Museum Authority have recently visited Qatar to explore possible links and collaborations for art gallery and museum studies at Leeds. Mariam is currently in the second year of her PhD and is writing about the development of a museum culture in the country, having worked at the National Museum of Qatar before it was closed for renovations. Her most recent writing has focused on the opening of the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, and the trip afforded the opportunity for Mariam to introduce Abigail to the amazing new building designed by I.M. Pei, the architect of the Louvre pyramid in Paris, and the opening exhibitions.

We are currently witnessing the rapid development of a museums culture across the Gulf and specifically in Qatar. Michael Rice, who worked at the Qatar National Museum between 1972 to 1974, recalls the attitude to history and heritage amongst the young in Qatar at that time:
We noticed that the local kids were coming in to the newly built museum building in the evenings and copying down the extensive texts there. We found out that they had been told by their teachers, who weren’t local, that they had no history-but because of the museum they realised that they did have a history and they responded. When the museum opened, they brought their parents and grandparents.
The last few years have seen a complete reversal of this attitude amongst the educators and leaders in Qatar. As Sheikha Al-Mayassa recently said in her conference paper ‘Qatar-centre of Middle East Museums’ at the Fourth Conference for Finance and Investment in London;
We in Qatar [wish]…to gain a regional and global reputation as an example of a community whose basic economy depends on variety and knowledge.
In order to emphasis the role that culture and museums can play in the economic and social development of the country, she added;
Civilizations all over the world agree on one point that ‘culture’ is not affected by the vacillation of the prices or the market’s cycle or the universal economic situation. Rather in most examples culture is considered as a powerful mover in economic development. It also plays a fundamental role in creating labour opportunities and provides an important source of national income.
These quotes illustrate how significant the funding of museum development has become for Qatar’s leaders. They are seen as vital for both the Qatari communities’ sense of its own heritage and its global identity. Lord Rothschild, a trustee on the Qatar National Museum Board emphasised this point when he announced that,
The Museum of Islamic Art is a profound expression of responsibility toward Qatar’s own heritage. The creation of the museum speaks of a laudable desire to preserve and honour the artistic traditions that are closest to Qatar’s own people.
Rather than being a museum, the Museum of Islamic Art is a place to learn and a platform for dialogue, as it will develop a productive relationship with some universally developed institutions such as the British Museum.
The Museum of Islamic Art, which opened on 22 November 2008 with great ceremony, and which has seen over thirty thousand visitors pass through its monumental doors since that date, is the first of a series of new and revamped museums planned for Qatar. The Qatar Museum Authority has produced a six-year plan under the title ‘21st Century Museums’, due for completion in 2012. During this period eight museums will be commissioned, new institutions such as the Islamic Art Museum(2008), the History of Education Museum(2010), the Natural History Museum(2012), the Science Museum(2012) and the Islamic Medicine Museum(2012), and renovated and reorganized museums, such as the Qatar National Museum(2011), the Oriental Arts and Photography Museum(2011) and the Weaponry and Equestrian Museum(2012). These museums have an ambitious remit, both to return and protect Qatari treasures;
With the oil boom and its resulting of economic fortune for the country, Qatar has had the opportunity to invest this fortune in the culture sector. This fortune allows the government to retrieve for Qatar the Islamic treasures, antiquities and archaeological pieces which belong to the civilization and had been taken abroad hundreds of years ago. Even if double their original price was paid, it was of paramount importance, that these artefacts were brought back to their original cultural field.
Such a grand plan highlights the need for students and researchers in museum studies to engage in the history, philosophy and practice of museums in the Gulf. This is an area which is under researched and theorised and we can usefully apply some of the post-colonial debates of the last few years to the region. There are also questions to be asked about the role of religion in museums and the role of the museum in political debates and in changing attitudes. The opening temporary exhibition at the IAM focuses on bringing together objects from the country’s collections with objects borrowed from decorative art collections across the globe, including the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In creating dialogues between these objects within the theme of ‘Crossing Boundaries’ the Museum aims to question how Islamic objects can be read through other religious ideas and ideals. This is an interesting starting point for the Museum which Mariam is investigating further in her work. She will be giving a lecture in the near future at Leeds on this project and Abigail is returning to Qatar at the request of Qatar University to deliver lectures on museum studies, a very new subject for the curriculum there, and to look at further research and teaching links between the two Universities. Mariam is the first student to be working on a thesis on the museums culture in Qatar and this is a rich, under-investigated area of study for the School.