Qatar Museums has announced a collaboration encompassing the exchange of exhibitions, programs, and scholarly cooperation with New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This decision comes right after the reopening of Doha’s reinstalled and reimagined Museum of Islamic Art and in celebration of the 10th 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 have continuously gifted The Metropolitan Museum of Art with its renowned collection for exhibitions. These artworks include 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). Similarly, 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.
To celebrate this continued collaboration a gallery at The Met presenting art from the Umayyad and Abbasid Periods (7th–13th centuries) has been named the Qatar Gallery.
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 honor the beauty, depth, and variety of a global tradition that spans fourteen centuries.
Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums