National Museum of Qatar
| Established | scheduled 1 January 2016 |
|---|---|
| Location | Doha, Qatar |
| Type | Art Museum |
| Director | Sheikha Amna bint Abdulaziz bin Jassim Al-Thani |
| Owner | Qatar Museums |
| Website | www |
The National Museum of Qatar is a museum currently under construction, located across from the Corniche in the Qatari capital Doha. The building, which is being constructed in place of the Qatar National Museum, was designed by architect Jean Nouvel. It was scheduled for a 2016 opening. however a 2017 or 2018 opening is now much more probable.
The new under-construction National Museum of Qatar (NMoQ) features an innovative design by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel that is inspired by the desert rose and grows organically around the original 20th century palace of Sheikh Abdullah Bin Jassim Al Thani. The historic Palace was restored by Berlin-based Architecture and Engineering firm Ziegert | Roswag | Seiler Architekten Ingenieure. This important monument to Qatar’s past is now preserved as the heart of the new NMoQ. The relation between the new and old building is part of creating the bridge between the past and the present advocated by Sheikha Al Mayassa for it is the way to "define ourselves instead of forever being defined by others… celebrating our identity."
The 430,000 sq ft museum is created by a series of interlocking discs that create cavities to protect visitors from the desert heat. Located on a 1.5 million-square-foot site at the south end of Doha’s Corniche, the NMoQ building will rise from the sea and will be connected to shore by two pedestrian bridges and a vehicular bridge.
The content of the exhibitions has been much more contentious with frequent changes of ideas which have delayed progress.
A tour of the future museum will take visitors through a loop of galleries that address three major, interrelated themes. The galleries will be loosely arranged in chronological order, beginning with exhibitions on the natural history of the desert and the Persian Gulf, artifacts from Bedouin culture, historical exhibitions on the tribal wars and the establishment of the Qatari state, and finally the discovery of oil to the present. The displays and installations that explore these themes will integrate exciting and involving audiovisual displays with carefully selected treasures from the museum’s collections. These collections currently consist of approximately 8,000 objects and include archaeological artifacts, architectural elements, heritage household and traveling objects, textiles and costumes, jewelry, decorative arts, books and historical documents.
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