“The pieces and antiques from ancient times come together with modern collections that are becoming more glamorous and sophisticated in the spectacular interactive galleries that we envisioned with HE Sheikha Amna bint Abdulaziz bin Jassim al-Thani, director of the National Museum of Qatar, and her team, as well as Qatar Museums Trustees, members and experts from many universities in Qatar and beyond,” HE Sheikha Al Mayassa pointed out. True to her words, the NMoQ reflects Qatar’s origins and modernity. The stunning building, designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, houses the renovated palace of Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim al-Thani.
The roots of the Qatari people are deep in history. “But our country is still a young country, so it is not surprising, when building our national museum, to fly away from the models of old museums, and to build a monument speaking in the language of the present and the future,” HE Sheikha Al Mayassa noted. In the same context, she pointed out that the international museums of the 19th century used to house strategic collections. “We believe that the museums of the 21st century depend on a more creative way, turning from just a place to store holdings and exhibits to a platform to build relations and open the horizons of dialogue, adding that visitors will find this vision applied in the National Museum of Qatar in a number of spaces such as garden and educational halls and museum programmes designed for all categories and cultures.”
HE Sheikha Al Mayassa also pointed out that the emphasis has been placed on the preparation of teachers to use the museum to teach all subjects including mathematics, history and geography. That the visionaries behind the NMoQ have succeeded in their path-breaking efforts was evident on the first day of public entry. Crowds of delighted visitors streamed in to the museum, with many staying for several hours to take in the multitude of experiences, sights and sounds on offer. The reaction from the public clearly indicated that the many months of painstaking work and precise planning had been a huge success as visitors were hugely complimentary about the living experience represented across the museum’s 11 galleries full of movement, sound and colour.
Right from the opening day, Qatari and expatriate residents have been able to immerse themselves in the museum’s unique, encompassing environments, each of which tells its part of the story of Qatar through a special combination of architectural space, music, poetry, oral histories, evocative aromas, archaeological and heritage objects, commissioned artworks, monumentally scaled art films, and more. In short, NMoQ has added yet another feather to Qatar’s crown of achievements.