MASTERS Art: A View of Qatar

Suzanne Swarts ventures beyond the walls of Voorlinden in search of the most exceptional places to experience art.

Suzanne Swarts enjoys venturing beyond the walls of 'her' Voorlinden in search of the most extraordinary places to admire art. In MASTERS, the museum director shares the experiences of her travels to these art havens. This time, she travels to the National Museum of Qatar.

After a flight of about eight hours, I step out at the world's most luxurious airport: Hamad International Airport near Doha. With its countless high-end shops, immense art installations, the serene indoor 'rainforest' of the Orchard Zen Garden, and world-class wellness facilities, the airport feels almost like a destination in itself. Yet, this is merely a taste of what the capital of Qatar has to offer. The peninsula in the Persian Gulf firmly established itself on the world map in just a few decades, and the hypermodern, well-organized, and sleekly designed Doha seems to have been built from the ground up largely during that period. It is almost impossible to imagine that you can find yourself in the middle of the vast desert within an hour's drive. It is precisely that contrast—between tradition and future, between sand and technology—that forms the core of the National Museum of Qatar (NMoQ).

539 protective discs

Although the museum is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year (and Voorlinden its tenth!), the current building dates from 2019. It was designed around the palace of Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani (1871-1957), the founder of modern Qatar. As the third emir, he implemented sweeping political reforms and laid the foundation for oil exports, which brought Qatar its immense wealth. The French architect Jean Nouvel built a spectacular 350-meter-long complex around his palace—the museum's most important artifact—inspired by the desert rose. “Qatar has a deep connection with the desert,” said Nouvel, “with its flora and fauna, its nomadic population, and its traditions. Those stories come together in the desert rose, formed by wind, salt, water, and sand.”

The building consists of 539 monumental discs, which define not only the exterior but also the spatial experience within. In eleven halls, the story of Qatar unfolds, beginning even before the formation of the peninsula itself. Do not expect a classic museum tour filled with display cases containing archaeological artifacts and a list of dry facts. Instead, you are carried along by films, sounds, interactive screens, and compelling stories: about how the Persian Gulf did not yet exist fifty thousand years ago and Qatar was still a dry river valley where shepherds grazed their sheep in the winter. About the unification of Qatari tribes, about the centuries-old tradition of pearl diving. Recent history is also covered: the explosive growth from some ten thousand inhabitants a century ago to nearly 2,5 million today, the majority of whom are Indians and Nepalese.

Forget the Vatican

The NMoQ is garnering international praise for the inventive use of interactive screens, large-scale projections, and immersive storytelling. So convincing, in fact, that The New York Times wrote: 'Skip the Vatican Museum. Go to the National Museum of QatarThe integration of oral tradition is striking: in every room, you hear Qataris speaking in their own words about their country, culture, and dreams for the future. This makes the NMoQ not only an architectural spectacle but, above all, a museum made for and by the people of Qatar, a place where past, present, and future meet.

The museum is the perfect starting point to fully appreciate the city of Doha. Combine it with a desert safari, where you tear across sand dunes in a 4x4 with a view of an endless horizon. Only then can you truly appreciate Doha's luxurious city life, with its designer hotels, exclusive shops, culinary delights, and art galleries. That way, you will eventually board the plane back at Hamad—with sand in your ears, but a head full of impressions—taking a piece of Qatar's magic with you.