Qatar Museums partners with New York City art museum

Qatar Museums has announced a collaboration encompassing the exchange of exhibitions, programs, and scholarly cooperation with New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The move comes on the occasion of the reopening of Doha’s reinstalled and reimagined Museum of Islamic Art, and in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the opening of The Met’s Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia.

Qatar Museums has provided a generous gift to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in recognition of Qatar’s support, a gallery at The Met presenting art from the Umayyad and Abbasid Periods (7th–13th centuries) has been named the Qatar Gallery.

The collaboration serves as a legacy project of Qatar Museums’ 2021 Year of Culture programme, which celebrated the strong ties between Qatar and the United States. As part of the institutions’ collaboration, Qatar Museums has lent works from its renowned collections to The Met for exhibitions – including Jerusalem in the Middle Ages (2016), Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1700: Opulence and Fantasy (2015), The Great Age of the Seljuks (2016) and Monumental Journey: The Daguerreotypes of Girault de Prangey (2019) – and works from The Met’s collection will go on view in Doha on October 26 in the inaugural special exhibition Baghdad: Eye’s Delight at the Museum of Islamic Art.

Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums, said: “The establishment of the Qatar Gallery at The Metropolitan Museum of Art highlights the collegiality between our institutions and our desire to advance a crucial goal we hold in common, to heighten appreciation everywhere for the art of the Islamic world. We are proud to come together with The Met to honour the beauty, depth, and variety of a global tradition that spans fourteen centuries.”

Max Hollein, Marina Kellen French Director of The Met, commented: “The Met is deeply grateful to Qatar Museums for this extraordinary act of generosity. This gift is the latest instance of the longstanding relationship between our institutions and marks the start of a broad collaboration encompassing the exchange of exhibitions, programs, and scholarly cooperation. This critical support is especially meaningful as we mark the 10th anniversary of the opening of The Met’s renovated galleries, which continue to be a source of great interest and inspiration for our millions of yearly visitors.”