Museum of Islamic Art: a whole new Doha

[qatarperegrine]

Visiting the brand-new Museum of Islamic Art last night was a good occasion for reflecting on how much Qatar has changed since I moved here in the summer of 2004. Standing on an island that didn't exist four years ago, looking out at a skyline that is completely unrecognizable from what it was four years ago, I took a picture of my favorite minaret in Doha, which didn't exist four years ago, and which overlooks Souq Waqif, my favorite hangout spot, which four years ago was a complete dump.

I don't know how to communicate to someone who hasn't been here the immensity of the changes since I arrived. For one thing, the population has doubled, from 742,883 to 1.56 million. The country has a constitution, which it didn't when I moved here. There are churches now. The landscape of the city changes so rapidly that, if you don't go somewhere for four or five months, you're likely to find when you go back that you can no longer get there the same way you used to.

And now Qatar has a lovely museum! Well, OK, the Islamic Arts Museum isn't Doha's first, but since the national museum has been under renovation the entire time I've lived here, it might as well be. Watching dozens of people of dozens of nationalities wandering around the courtyard outside the museum, a friend who grew up here said, "I feel like I'm not in Doha right now." We all nodded. I.M. Pei recently said about Qatar, "There is ... no real life unless you go into the souk," which is brutal but in a sense true; the souq is the only place in Qatar you see people walking around outdoors, going about their business, living life. Seeing people bustling around a museum was very strange.

As for the museum itself: the building is beautiful, the collection is impressive, and we stayed much longer than we expected. My favorite collection was the calligraphy; if you look through the rest of my photo album, you can compare a variety of different Arabic scripts, all beautiful. My only complaint is that there is no museum cafe: what is an art museum without a museum cafe?

A more substantial complaint, perhaps, is that although this is apparently already the world's largest collection of Islamic art, it somehow lacks a pièce de résistance. What is the the Islamic art equivalent to the Mona Lisa or Michaelangelo's David? (Though I see one art writer has criticized the Museum of Islamic Art for having masterpieces but not pointing them out effectively.)

All in all it was a very satisfying museum experience, and I'm pleased that it's something Qatar has chosen to invest in. I find myself wistfully wishing that my loved ones who visited Qatar shortly after we moved here could see it now -- the liveliness of the souq, the bustle of the newly opened museum, the beautiful night skyline. I'm very fond of this new Qatar that's emerging.