Museum Series

QAIC’s Museum Series will bring together panels composed of museum experts and curators from Qatar and the US to highlight and discuss their respective collections and the factors that contributed to their composition, as well as the impact that they have had on their respective organizations and throughout the wider world.

The distinguished speakers will present and discuss the curation, evolution, and history of each museums’ collection and the various factors and challenges facing them. Audiences will get a unique insider’s look into the curatorial processes of various museums, the history of these collections, and the differing approaches museums in the West versus the East take to acquire and successfully exhibit them.

Past Events

QAIC’s second edition of the Museum Series focused on Indigenous Art collections from the National Museum of Qatar in Doha, Qatar, the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

This panel, moderated by QAIC’s Executive Director Fatima Al-Dosari, specifically centered around discussing and challenging the preconceived notions about both indigenous and native arts and cultures, as we tell the stories of extant peoples and traditions between the peoples of the Americas and the greater Arabian Gulf region.

The curators featured were the following:

Dr. Alexandrine Guerin – National Museum of Qatar

Dr. Manuela Well-Off-Man – Institute of American Indian Arts: Museum of Contemporary Native Arts

Dr. Lucy Fowler Williams – Penn Museum

This edition of the Museum Series featured a panel of curators that manage the Islamic art collections at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, the Freer Gallery of Art, and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and The Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. This panel was moderated by the Chair of QAIC’s Board of Directors, Peggy Loar. The panel explored the evolution of Islamic art curation in museums today as experts from both the U.S. and Qatar shared their own curatorial processes and approaches towards exhibiting their institution’s Islamic art collections.

The curators featured were the following:

Dr. Navina Najat Haidar, Nasser Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah Curator in Charge of the Department of Islamic Art – The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dr. Massumeh Farhad, Chief Curator and The Ebrahimi Family Curator of Persian, Arab, and Turkish Art – Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian

Dr. Aimée Froom, Curator of Art of the Islamic Worlds – Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Dr. Linda Komaroff, Curator of Islamic Art and Department Head of Art of the Middle East – Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Dr. Julia Gonnella, Director of the Museum of Islamic Art – Museum of Islamic Art, Doha

The second issue of A2Q (America to Qatar), QAIC’s digital magazine, is now available. Read our second issue here!

Past Events

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