Mathaf hosts exhibitions, programs and events that explore and celebrate art by Arab artists and offer an Arab perspective on international modern and contemporary art. This Museum hope the people can use them as an inspiring space for dialogue and scholarship about modern and contemporary art in the region, the Arab diaspora, and beyond.

The museum story really begins more than twenty years ago, when patron and founder H.E. Sheikh Hassan bin Mohamed bin Ali Al Thani first began to imagine what an Arab Museum of Modern Art might look like. He started to build a collection that could serve artists and public as a rich and representative treasure-house of modern Arab art. And he saw this collection as a starting point, to create more opportunities for artists and for art-lovers in Doha and around the world.

The Museum is a unique space, located in a former school near Doha’s Education City. The building has been re-designed by the French architect Jean-François Bodin to house collection, gallery space and a variety of facilities:

Manara

The Museum’s education wing offers ongoing learning opportunities. We host artist encounters, talks, school tours, summer programs, workshops and more.

Maktaba

Our research library is spacious, white, peaceful and dotted with comfortable sofas for you to sit back with an art book. To help you pursue deeper interests, Maktaba offers a wide range of scholarly resources, plenty of tables to spread out on, and free WiFi. Our print and digital collections cover general art history, modern art worldwide and art theory, with a special focus on the Arab world.

Mahal

The museum shop is our version of the legendary little store everyone wants to have round the corner — personal, unique, and full of one-off designs to present as gifts or just treasure for yourself.

Maqha

The Musuem’s stripped-back coffee bar is designed around the modern art of conversation. It’s comfortable and contemporary, with plenty of space, good food and a nicely chilled atmosphere, by which we don’t just mean the air-conditioning.

Actually they are two main exhibitions, Tea with Nefertiti and Forever Now

Tea with Nefertiti

November 17, 2012 – March 31, 2013

This exhibition examines our perceptions of an artwork from three distinct perspectives: the artist, the museum, and the public. Through revisiting the contested histories of how Egyptian collections have been amassed by numerous museums from the 19th century onwards, it brings together antiquities, modernist works, archives, and 26 international contemporary artists and artist collectives.

Forever Now

November 17, 2012 – June 1, 2013

Forever Now proposes new readings based on the works of five artists from Musuem’s permanent collection. This exhibition unpacks new narratives that posit a unique understanding of five diverse artists: Fahrelnissa Zeid, Jewad Selim, Saliba Douaihy, Salim Al–Dabbagh and Ahmed Cherkaoui.

Arab Museum of Modern Art

P.O.Box 2777, Education City, Doha, Qatar

00 974 4402 8855