Qatar Museums will cooperate with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in a collaboration that will involve the sharing of exhibitions, events, and scholarly interaction. To celebrate the launch of Qatar’s revamped Museum of Islamic Art and the 10th anniversary of the Met’s opening of restored Islamic art department galleries, Qatar Museums has offered a donation to the esteemed New York institution.
The Umayyad and Abbasid art collection at the Met is now known as the Qatar Gallery. Following the Umayyads (661-750), the Abbasid caliphate (750-1258) moved the centre of Islamic political and cultural life from Syria to Iraq.
As part of the partnership, Qatar Museums has given the Met loans of artwork from its holdings for exhibitions like “Jerusalem in the Middle Ages”, “Sultans of Deccan India, : Opulence and Fantasy”, “The Great Age of the Seljuks” (2016), and “Monumental Journey: Girault de Prangey’s Daguerreotypes” (2016).
The joint efforts of the cultural organisations support the aim of the Qatar Museum, which is to introduce the rest of the world to the art and culture of Qatar and the surrounding area.
It is also a continuation of the Qatar Museums’ 2021 Year of Culture initiative, which through a year-long cultural exchange honoured the close links between Qatar and the US.
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, was present at the launch event to honour the collaboration. He took a tour of the museum, stopping by the Qatar Gallery to see the Islamic art and manuscripts there.