Arab Museum of Modern Art offers inspiring experience to World Cup fans
“Mathaf” the Arab Museum of Modern Art stands out as a beacon of modern Arab art in Qatar and one of several major art institutions and centres that have opened in recent years in Doha.
Founded in 2010 in Education City, Mathaf’s collection, which is jointly owned by Qatar Museums and Qatar Foundation, includes more than 9,000 works of art, making it the largest specialised collection of its kind in the world.
It will serve as a hearty art meal for art lovers among football fans who will attend FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.
The beginnings of the museum dates back to a first collection of works on modern and contemporary art, acquired by Sheikh Hassan bin Mohamed al-Thani, Head of Mathaf, in the early 1990s.
It mainly focuses on the region and its historical and cultural connection from North Africa to Asia and from Turkey to Iran.
The first space of Mathaf, situated in two private villas in Madinat Khalifa in Doha, was conceived from the idea of what an Arab Museum of Modern Art might look like, a place for sharing the massive production of art in the region.
The development of the museum has continued as an inspiring space for dialogue and scholarship about modern and contemporary art with artists in residency in Doha, and also as a place for art production and display.
Today Mathaf focuses on showing the permanent collection and producing major shows based on new commissions.
Mathaf has hosted works by major international artists, whether from the Arab world or across the world and established several partnerships with internal and external parties.
One of Mathaf’s most prominent works is Mathaf Encyclopedia of Modern Art and the Arab World, which is a bilingual, peerreviewed online resource providing free in-depth information on modern and -reviewed scholarly resource on facts and in-depth information about artists from the Arab world. It is publicly available online in both Arabic and English.
Since the beginning of publishing the encyclopedia project in 2013, Mathaf’s research and evaluation team has commissioned a group of independent academics and researchers to write biographical references on artists in the context of modern and contemporary art, with the aim of developing knowledge about art history in the region in general and Mathaf’s permanent collection in particular.
The encyclopedia provides a database of Arab artists and a comprehensive view of the development of modernity in the Arab world.
In addition to biographies of the artists, the encyclopedia includes scholarly articles and interviews with artists to enrich the encyclopedia with new perspectives in the context of artistic practices and modernity.
Work continues on the encyclopedia in order to develop it to include a larger number of artists from Mathaf’s permanent collection and other Arab artists.
The encyclopedia also provides a platform that seeks to encourage knowledge exchange and multiple perspectives on art and modernity to enhance communication between researchers and academics around the world.
Mathaf will be open to fans during the World Cup, with the exception of match days that will be held at Education City Stadium: Nov 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 and Dec 2, 6, 9.