LINES IN THE SAND Sheikha Al-Mayassa discusses how Qatar is redrawing the map of the art world
Sheikha Al-Mayassa – a female royal in a nation where women must walk a careful line in the cultural landscape – has positioned herself and Qatar at the epicentre of the global art world with astonishing displays of unrivalled purchasing power. In an unprecedented interview, she reveals her belief that, regardless of local traditions or taboos, art can play a vital role in bridging societal divisions
We have always to be sensitive to our culture, because the idea is not to provoke, in terms of go against our beliefs – but to provoke a thought. To make people think of what is happening around the world,’ says Her Excellency Sheikha AlMayassa, the daughter of the former Emir of Qatar, a member of the royal house of AlThani, and – as the chairperson of Qatar Museums – at the age of just 36, arguably the most influential person in the art world today.
It has taken a long time, in fact years, to set up this interview. The Sheikha – occasionally seen but very rarely heard, a mother of four whose photographs usually show her with a covered head – travels so extensively that it has been almost impossible to find even a free morning in her diary. Eventually we meet in Venice, where she is visiting the architecture Biennale with her family.
I wait for her in an exquisite suite at the Hotel Cipriani (occupied, I am told, by the Clooneys during their prolonged wedding celebrations), from whose small shuttered balcony one can see, across the soft lagoon, the matchless façades of San Marco. This seems a particularly appropriate mise en scène. Venice, after all, is historically where Europe met Asia, and where the mercantile met the majestically artistic. Money, patronage, cultural hunger: these are the elements that inspired art in the past. It is hard to resist comparison between those great patrons of the quattrocento, generating power but also beauty through their limitless largesse, and the AlThani ambitions for the globalised 21st century.
I have been extensively briefed for this encounter. Not just with information, but with how to address the Sheikha (as ‘Your
Excellency’); to remember that she is royalty, and that therefore this is comparable with interviewing the Queen; not to make physical contact. It is fair to say that what with the advice, the twostrong retinue in attendance and the large amounts of irresistible Italian coffee, I am somewhat jittery.
So it is disarming – to say the least – when into the suite strides a lovely young woman with an outstretched hand. ‘Hi,’ she says, and curls herself elegantly into a chair. Her appearance is a casually luxuriant blend of East and West. She wears a loose white tunic, a pair of delectable Burberry trainers and – most notably – her hair is long, lustrous and free. Is this a surprise? After a moment, not in the least. Sheikha AlMayassa, after all, is the supreme cosmopolitan: educated in the US and Paris, fluent in English and French, her accent a quick, energised blend of Arabic and American. For all this, one is very aware of who she is, perhaps because she is so unselfconscious about it: she has the direct, frictionless, utterly gracious manner of the truly regal, and the relaxation of the truly powerful. She does not pull rank, because she has no need to do so.
Instead she talks like anybody with an ‘aren’t I lucky’ job, eagerly discussing the artists with whom she has worked – recalling the thrill of meeting Louise Bourgeois just before her death (‘We were negotiating the acquisition of Maman, and it was the last piece the artist had of that scale, I think’), or the amazing work that Mona Hatoum does with local artisans (‘So there’s always something unique to the location she is in’). At the same time, as befits her position, the Sheikha refers to this job as a ‘responsibility, working for my government’. She has also described herself as a civil servant.
Yet the truth is that she stands at the heart of an art world that has, throughout the past decade, had its elegant cage rattled by the restless Middle East, which is seeking to diversify its economy while oil and gas can still pay for any project it chooses.
Abu Dhabi, fortified by the reassurance of familiar cultural ‘brands’, has created its own domestic offshoots of the Louvre, the Guggenheim and the British Museum, rather as one might set up concessions within Harrods. Qatar (which incidentally owns Harrods) is doing things its own way. And, as directed by the Sheikha, the Qatar Museums’ strategy is formidable: an intricate blend of acquisition and development, in which tradition is honoured and the future fearlessly grasped. It was estimated by Bloomberg that Qatar Museums has an annual acquisitions budget of around $1 billion. According to Art + Auction magazine: ‘Sheikha AlMayassa has the resources of an entire country at her disposal.’
And what a country. Qatar’s oil and gas reserves are so abundant as to make it the richest state in the world in terms of GDP per capita. Its staggering spending power has spread so deep and wide (Harrods was probably bought with loose change) that it was easy to give credence to the rumour that Sheikha AlMayassa had, in 2015, paid $300 million for Gauguin’s When Will You Marry? – thus making it at the time the most expensive painting in the world. The New York Times has since reported that the actual price was $210 million. Nevertheless, the purchase was hugely significant; as was the nature of the rumour. So too was the $250 million said to have been paid for a painting in the Cézanne series The Card Players; the $20 million for a Damien Hirst pill cabinet; and more besides. These spending flurries have apparently abated, to the point where one almost wonders if they were done as a statement of intent (the works themselves are not at present on public display). Yet there is no doubt that this elusive Arab princess, whose name began to feature on power lists some four or five years ago, has shaken up the international art world.
The AlThani family are notable collectors, to the point where they have been compared with the Medicis. Yet the emphasis, in conversation with the Sheikha, is always upon the public dimension: on the vital importance of developing the culture of her country, with its profound Bedouin past and gilded yet uneasy recent history; and of using art as a means to look outwards. ‘At least art allows for a dialogue,’ she says. The reputation of Qatar is so conflicted – the shadowy links with the Muslim Brotherhood, the stealthy manner in which it won its bid for the 2022 World Cup – but the desire, as expressed by the Sheikha, to create a climate of enlightenment is benevolent, impressive and surely very important.
A remarkable number of initiatives have been launched, among them Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, which showcases
‘I do believe, that culture gives you the opportunity to talk about things you may find difficult’
many pieces owned by the Al-Thanis, and an artist-in-residence programme housed within the former Civil Defence building, which has 24 studios available. ‘We thought to ourselves, “How are we going to fill these?”’ says the Sheikha. ‘The first year we had, I think it was 120 applicants… So we knew there was hunger and demand.’ Meanwhile, a space such as the Museum of Islamic Art – a superb sand-colour building by the Chinese-American architect IM Pei, a complexity of light and shade in the fierce Doha sun, containing items of exquisite historical richness – is reimagining the template of what a museum can be.
The National Museum that opens next year promises to be equally impressive, with its astounding design by Jean Nouvel: a series of overlaying stone plates, or ‘petals’, based upon the concept of the desert rose. So great is the engineering feat that ‘we have students from Harvard-MIT come to study the building’, says the Sheikha. The building is a proclamation of pride – ‘The museum focuses on Qatar. Its past, its present and its future’ – and also creates a very special involvement with local collectors, Qatari citizens, by encouraging them to lend pieces for display.
A plaque beneath an exhibit with one’s name upon it? Such a thing would certainly help ensure one’s loyalty to the grand concept of cultural development, even among the more conservative sections of society, even when art takes the intensely contemporary form of
Richard Serra’s four standing steel plates, entitled East-West/West-East and installed in the middle of the Qatari desert. The setting was Sheikha Al-Mayassa’s idea. ‘Some people loved it, some people didn’t like it – but now it’s really popular. If you go it’s always busy – there are always people there, taking photos, having picnics….’ A Stonehenge for the modern age: enabling such a thing is, I would suggest, a small legacy all of its own.
Still, one is bound to ask certain questions, the kind that cannot really be put. For instance: will the fathomless riches that the Sheikha can command distort the art markets and – rather as Arab money did within horse-racing – turn the merely very rich into impotent bystanders, clutching their auction catalogues and watching yet another treasure go to the Middle East? Is the art world shifting irrevocably toward countries where the money flows like just another natural resource and the populations are overwhelmingly young (around 60 per cent of Qataris are under 30)? If so, what will that mean for art itself? Will new styles be forged and grow, or will essential freedoms be lost? To put it bluntly, can a sumptuous naked Rubens be exhibited in a Muslim country?
Almost by definition, art equates to openness in the West. Sheikha Al-Mayassa herself would probably subscribe to this idea, but she works within a society that may not always agree. With regard to this – what one might call the ‘Rubens problem’ – she says: ‘I do believe, yes, that culture gives you an opportunity – or an excuse even – to talk about things that you may find difficult.’ In 2012, for instance, the Sheikha staged an exhibition of photographs by Brigitte Lacombe, entitled ‘Arab Women in Sport’. Some of these are shocking to Western eyes – the netball players swaddled from crown to ankle – yet others show girls in normal Lycra athletics kit; and one is struck by the daring, the measured political skill, that facilitated the display of such calmly controversial images. Especially when one sets this against the work of Hana Al-Saadi, the young sculptor who created a dancer figure dressed in ballet shoes and a body-concealing abaya. ‘I think she was explaining her story. She used to do ballet, and at a certain age what you have to wear as a ballerina contradicts our local tradition.’
The Sheikha has showcased work by a large number of women, including Mona Hatoum, Etel Adnan and Louise Bourgeois. Naturally I ask about her own interest in these artists, and whether their work has any special significance to her as a woman in a Muslim country. Her reply is given with a charming knowingness. ‘You’re right, we have done a lot of exhibitions with female artists!’ She smiles. ‘But to be honest, when we look at the exhibitions, we think about the content and the story. Less about the gender – supporting male artists is just as important to us as supporting female artists.
‘Women have made tremendous leaps into different sectors, and hold many important roles in Qatari society. Actually, at Qatar Museums we try to attract more men to this field, because I believe the percentage of women working here is considerably higher.’ While the Sheikha is referring to the people who work in the museums, her remarks have a wider application, in that historically art has not been seen as a male profession here. Artisan skills such as tent-making (showcased in the National Museum) were generally practised by women, and now the fast-developing Qatari art scene is – and this may come as a delightful surprise – very much female-led. The Sheikha cites Al-Saadi, who won a competition to spend time in Damien Hirst’s studio after he exhibited in Qatar; and Aisha Nasser Al-Sowaidi, who fashions odd, touching takes on domestic objects, such as teddy bears, and is featured at this year’s London Design Biennale.
‘I’m very proud of what they’ve achieved. Like Aisha, she’s a single mum, and she’s very dedicated. She’s young, she works hard, she works long hours. And she’s a good role model for other women in the region.’
Given that the world is currently somewhat hooked on despair, a woman like Sheikha Al-Mayassa – a philanthropist who seeks to bridge cultural divisions, and uses power in the pursuit of progress – does encourage a sense of hope. ‘I think one has to be optimistic’, she says. There could be no better symbol of this than the exhibition, opening in November, with which the Museum of Islamic Art marks its 10th anniversary: ‘Syria Matters’, a celebration of the beautiful, subtle, intricate heritage of a country whose culture has been so brutally and crassly attacked. Civilisation, says such an exhibition, is frail. Nevertheless it is stronger than ignorance.
As to the longer-term future: ‘When centres of economies and powers change, then the artistic directions also change. So – I don’t know what the situation is going to be in 100 years from now, but I think things are continuously evolving.’ A statement open to interpretation, for sure. But if the art keeps coming, so will the hope.
For more information on Qatar Museums, visit www.qm.org.qa/en.
‘Women have made tremendous leaps into different sectors in Qatari society’