National Museum of Qatar reflects on 50 years of history, identity and reinvention

Celebrating its anniversary with a retrospective exhibition titled A Nation’s Legacy, A People’s Memory: Fifty Years Told, the National Museum of Qatar offers a comprehensive survey of its journey – from its modest beginnings to its present-day reinvention.

Since its founding in 1975 by former Emir Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani as one of the first museums in the Gulf, the institution has remained a source of pride and identity for the people of Qatar.

Drawing on archival documents, photographs and personal testimonies, the exhibition traces the museum’s evolution across five decades, highlighting key exhibitions and programmes, its role in preserving national heritage, and its reopening in 2019 as a state-of-the-art, institution housed in the a building designed by French architect Jean Nouvel.

“For half a century, the National Museum of Qatar has safeguarded the legacy of our nation and its national treasures, while continually developing new ways of storytelling through advances in technology,” says museum director Sheikh Abdulaziz Al Thani. “With A Nation’s Legacy, A People’s Memory: Fifty Years Told, we invite audiences to celebrate the institution’s record of honouring our heritage while imagining what lies ahead.

“From the beginning, the Qatar National Museum – as it was then called – was centred on Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Palace, a former seat of government and home of the son of the founder of modern Qatar,” he adds. “Preserving the palace, and collecting and sharing the history and traditions of Qatar, were its core aims. Fifty years on, the palace remains at the literal and figurative heart of the museum, now surrounded by Jean Nouvel’s bold design inspired by the desert rose.”

The institution was founded in 1975 as the Qatar National Museum. Photo: National Museum of Qatar

Alongside the historical material are is installations by contemporary Qatari artists, including Shouq Al Mana and Khalifa Al Thani, which reflect on the museum’s place within the local creative landscape.

The exhibition opens in Gallery 13 with a section on the museum’s founding and the restoration of the palace, a project that won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1980. An installation by Khalifa Al Thani brings together 11 vintage television monitors, framed in carved wood, animating architectural drawings and archival imagery to underscore the palace’s role as a living historical site.

Al Mana’s Earth Dome pays tribute to the original installation that featured prominently in the museum’s earlier incarnation. The work references the 1975 display that paired a Quranic verse with a visualisation of the Earth’s formation, narrating Qatar’s transformation from island to Gulf nation.