Iconic institution shares updates on the large-scale oral history project, visitor experience and education programme

The National Museum of Qatar (NMoQ) held the first official briefing about the upcoming landmark museum, offering a glimpse into the visitor-focused experience the museum was designed to create. A team of representatives from Qatar Museums (QM) and NMoQ  shared previously undisclosed details with the public ahead of the museum’s official opening next year. 

NMoQ Speakers Briefing

Dr Haya Al Thani, NMoQ Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs, outlined the scope and scale of this activity, describing how the museum had worked with partners including the Doha Film Institute over five years to record these memories and preserve information about the country. More than 70 films will be displayed through the museum galleries, bringing the displays of objects to life through shared memories of recent history. In all, more than 300 members of the public participated in the project. 

NMoQ is housed within a spectacular new building designed by architect Jean Nouvel, which will open to the public on 28 March 2019 under the patronage of HH Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.

The immersive and experiential NMoQ tells the story of the people and the land of Qatar from earliest times to today, giving voice to the country’s rich heritage and culture and expressing a vibrant community’s aspirations for the future.

HE Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums, said Qatar is an ancient land, rich in the traditions of the desert and the sea, but also a land that hosted many past civilizations.

While it has modernised its infrastructure, it has still remained true to its core cultural values. We look forward to sharing new Museum experiences with our proud and diverse communities, as well as welcoming international guests in the spring of next year.’

Jean Nouvel’s dynamic architectural design echoes the geography of Qatar while evoking the history and culture of the nation. According to Nouvel, Qatar has a deep rapport with the desert, with its flora and fauna, its nomadic people, its long traditions. To fuse these contrasting stories, he said he needed a symbolic element.

Eventually, I remembered the phenomenon of the desert rose: crystalline forms, like miniature architectural events, that emerge from the ground through the work of wind, salt water, and sand. The Museum that developed from this idea, with its great curved disks, intersections, and cantilevered angles, is a totality, at once architectural, spatial, and sensory.’

Visitor Experience

NMoQ is organised in three chapters — Beginnings, Life in Qatar, and Building the Nation — presented in eleven galleries. The visitor’s chronological journey, which extends through more than 1.5 km of experiences, starts in the geological period long before the peninsula was inhabited by humans and continues to the present day. The route passes through a succession of impressive, remarkably shaped volumes until it reaches the very heart of Qatari national identity, the thoroughly restored Palace of Sheikh Abdullah.

Each gallery is an all-encompassing environment, which tells its part of the grand story through a creative combination of elements such as music, storytelling, archival images, oral histories and evocative aromas. Designed as distinctive experiences, these environmental galleries also contextualise an impressive array of archaeological and heritage objects, which include the renowned Pearl Carpet of Baroda — embroidered with more than 1.5 million of the highest quality Gulf pearls and adorned with emeralds, diamonds, and sapphires — as well as manuscripts, documents, photographs, jewellery, and costumes.

Local and international artists have also been invited to create site-specific commissions, in response to the Museum’s collection and as an enhancement of the exhibition experience.

Community engagement

The 112,000 square metre public park that surrounds the Museum is landscaped exclusively with drought-resistant native vegetation. This creates outdoor areas where children can learn through play and exploration, discovering crucial aspects of life in Qatar, in an echo of what they learn from the museum itself.

The museum itself will also offer a wide range of activities for the entire community. These include spaces that host educational and cultural activities such as workshops, competitions and arts education, plus other activities for school students. Educating the public about topics related to culture and history and which complement the national curriculum is a major focus for NMoQ. 

NMoQ will open to the public on 28 March 2019. For updates and more information about NMoQ, visit qm.org.qa