Qatar Museums today announced details of the special exhibition Lusail Museum: Tales of a Connected World, opening 24 October at QM Gallery Al Riwaq as a preview of the vision for the new Lusail Museum, its architectural design, and its world-class collection of art. This introduction to the new institution, which is scheduled to break ground in 2023, is presented as part of the year-round national cultural movement Qatar Creates, opening in time for the influx of visitors to Doha for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™.

Accompanying Tales of a Connected World in autumn 2022 will be three more special exhibitions—presented at the Garage Gallery, Fire Station, QM Gallery Katara, and the Museum of Islamic Art—that give additional insights into the scope and viewpoint to be encountered in the new Lusail Museum. Designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning architects Herzog & de Meuron, the Lusail Museum building will be constructed in Lusail, the home of Sheikh Jassim bin Mohammed bin Thani, the statesman, diplomat, and poet who was the founder of Qatar.

Her Excellency Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums, said, “Tales of a Connected World will offer the public a first glimpse of the vast and diverse collections that will be found in the new Lusail Museum and the complex, nuanced stories the institution will tell about moments of encounter among different peoples across the far-flung networks of the Indian Ocean. Through this exhibition and the three others that accompany it this autumn, audiences may begin to reflect on the themes of movement, identity, and exchange that are central to the Lusail Museum. They also will understand how this new institution will serve both as a showcase for extraordinary artworks and objects and also as a forum for much-needed dialogue about global challenges, past, present, and future.”

Estithmar Holding is the Presenting Sponsor of Tales of a Connected World. During a signing ceremony announcing the company’s partnership with Qatar Museums, Estithmar Holding QPSC Chairman Moutaz Al Khayyat, said, “We are delighted to be the Presenting Sponsor for the exhibition Lusail Museum: Tales of a Connected World as part of our commitment to developing a city of the future in Lusail.”

Three accompanying exhibitions which tell diverse stories of the world:

• Experience Al Jazeera, on view at the Garage Gallery, Fire Station from 1 November 2022 – 25 March 2023, celebrates the emergence of a voice from the Arab world that has become a pioneer in the contemporary media landscape both regionally and globally.

• Labour of Love: Embroidering Palestinian History, on view at QM Gallery Katara from 12 October 2022 – 28 January 2023, is a journey to discover Palestine through the art of embroidery. The land of Palestine carries a complex contemporary history, a narrative that Lusail Museum seeks to better understand.

• Raku Kichizaemon XV: Jikinyū’ – A Living Tradition of Japanese Pottery on view at the Museum of Islamic Art from 25 October 2022 – March 2023 displays a set of fourteen ceremonial tea bowls inspired by Qatar’s natural environment and people, featuring the poetry of Sheikh Jassim the Founder, whose home was Lusail.

The overarching exhibition, Lusail Museum: Tales of a Connected World, will highlight the past, present, and future of Lusail through images of archaeological remains, the Lusail Heritage site, and Lusail today as a flourishing city. The exhibition will comprise 247 objects, many from the world’s most extensive collection of paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, rare texts, and applied arts, assembled by Qatar Museums. An immersive, interactive digital trail will complement the exhibition and the visitor experience and will include films from the Doha Film Institute, as well as soundscapes introducing historical and contemporary musicians from around the globe. The exhibition is curated by Dr. Xavier Dectot, Director of the Lusail Museum with design by Studio Adrien Gardère.

Dr. Xavier Dectot said, “By using its remarkable collection to show how diverse people have spread ideas across land and sea, whether through trade in precious objects or through the exchange of knowledge, the new Lusail Museum will be a place for coming together and an opportunity to better understand one another. It will work with its collection and audiences in innovative ways to shed light on points in history which have been overlooked or misunderstood and spark debate to help us to understand our present. We are excited to prefigure the ambitious mission of the Lusail Museum through Tales of a Connected World.”

Visitors to Tales of a Connected World will also be able to explore how Herzog & de Meuron has conceptualised and developed the design for the Lusail Museum building. Jacques Herzog said, “Like Qatar itself, the Lusail Museum will be a platform for exchange and debate, which is especially significant given the new institution’s focus on political, social, and cultural exchange. Reflecting this viewpoint, the building that will serve as a vessel for the museum’s discourse comprises a complex topography: a juxstaposition of fragments of different places and functions.”

Exhibition contents

Tales of a Connected World places the museum and Qatar at the heart of the Indian Ocean world, exploring how the robust trade routes that carried people, objects, and ideas around the globe influenced the way people interact to this day. Key stories include Wajbah as the site of the epoch-making battle between Qatari and Ottoman forces, Jerusalem as the crossroads of faiths, 10th century Córdoba, Nineveh, and the Court of Sultan Suleyman. Qatar is center-stage again in the exploration of the artist Eugene Delecroix’s fascination with the Arabian horse and horseman, a fascination which persists globally today – Sheikh Jassim Bin Khalifa Al Thani's Aljassimya Farm is one of the largest breeders of Arabian horses in the world.

The extraordinary collection is always at the centre of the exhibition’s narrative. Notable works and their potential for multiple readings in today’s globalised world are displayed in diverse ways – from a dense hang evoking the display techniques of the 19th-century Salon in which such works would originally have been seen, to a focus on individual objects which capture key historic moments, to a juxtaposition of historic and contemporary works that illuminate changing ideas about people, ideas and encounters.

One example of the exhibition’s re-focussing of the gaze is the presentation of story of Amanirenas, Queen of the Kingdom of Kush (in what is now Sudan and southern Egypt), who had led her armies against Rome just a few years before the far better known story of Antony and Cleopatra. The exhibition explores how one story is neglected and the other celebrated, showcasing objects including props and costumes from the 1963 film Cleopatra and Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s painting The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra: 41 BC (1884). Reasserting the importance of Kush and other African civilisations, the gallery also features a first edition of The Voyage to Meroe by Caillaud and images from Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser’s visit to Meroe, where the iconic pyramids are being restored by the Qatar-Sudan Archaeological Project (QSAP).

Film plays a central role in the exhibition – visitors will encounter film clips, stills, models and costume elements from Hollywood films including the 1924 classic The Thief of Bahgdad, Cleopatra (1963), as noted above, Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and the blockbuster Star Wars movies. Classics of world cinema include Zaineb Hates the Snow (2016) directed by Tunisian film-maker Kaother Ben Hania and Taste of Cherry (1997) by the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. The Portrait of Suleyman the Magnificent from the workshop of Titian (1843-1844) will be on display as one of the star objects exploring the enduring legacies of global encounters, alongside other significant paintings such as Mariano Fortuny y Marsal’s Arab Before a Tapestry, José Tapiró y Baró’s A Moroccan Bride (1860), and Rudolf Ernst’s Outside the Selim Türbe, Istanbul (1885). Objects capturing the ideas, creativity and technological advances that travelled across the Indian Ocean world include the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), a rock crystal chess piece from 10-11th century CE Egypt and one of the first printed editions of the Book of Wonders by Marco Polo (1529).

The central space in the exhibition is dedicated to the architecture of the new museum. This space is curated by Herzog & de Meuron and presents the design process through wall projections and a large floor installation showcasing working models, concept images and material samples. The room will also include a newly commissioned model of the Museum.

The exhibition includes two interactive programming spaces. The first is the Lusail Museum Think Tank space, which reflects the plans of the future Museum to foster new ideas through interactions between audiences and philosophers, sociologists, historians, and diplomats. While the exhibition is on view, visitors will be invited to contemplate and challenge perceptions of the Arab world presented in the artworks on display in the exhibition. The second space will present a changing programme of short films from DFI’s archive that speak to the themes of the exhibition and future Museum.

The Lusail Museum will be located on Al Maha Island, Lusail, complementing the newly opened Lusail Wonderland Park developed in association with Estithmar Ventures and IMG, in collaboration with Qatar Tourism and Qatari Diar.

Source and cover image credit: Press release

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Cassandra Pallagud

Content Writer

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