Postcard from Doha

       

Ever since the Museum of Islamic Art opened in the autumn of 2008 in Doha, Qatar, I have meant to make a weekend trip and check out this celebrated new museum. One former colleague, Yasser Tabbaa, attended the opening of the museum, and ever since his arrival in 2009, my colleague Charlie and I have talked about a weekend jaunt to Doha. As can happen, other trips both home and abroad popped up, and the plans shuttered time and again. Ten days ago, as we looked towards a long weekend due to Orthodox Easter, I almost went to London for another weekend rendez-vous with New Yorker Christy. But I thought, gee whiz, Charlie is leaving Jordan after four years and we have yet to make this trip to Doha. So Charlie planned the trip to Doha.

Part of what was exciting about this trip is that it is the first time in a while that I would go somewhere new! I also liked the glam aspect of the trip that we were going to Doha mostly to see a funky, exciting building. That seemed so jet-setter to go and check out the new Museum of Islamic Art.

Off we went a week ago Friday, admiring again the stunning new airport in Amman as we hopped over to Bahrain and then a flight to Doha. Charlie had been there before so he could fill me in on some things about Doha. I am not sure if I knew anything about Qatar before moving to Jordan, but like many other areas in this neck of the woods, Ottomans and British kept up a tug-of-war throughout the 19^th century with this coastal country and then after the first world war did in the Ottomans, the Brits took Qatar as a protectorate.

As we landed and taxied to our hotel, it was interesting to begin to try and make sense of Doha. It has shades of Dubai and Las Vegas, but has yet to make tourism a major goal (so, hmmm…maybe there is little in common with Duba and Vegas!)  Charlie is a wealth of information and gave some background about the explosive growth in Doha in the last 10 years. Having been to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Riyadh, it was easy to see that the last 10-15 years have been exciting ones for architects in the Arab world. As we travelled along the Corniche, the picturesque roadway along the bay in Doha, one is astounded by the flashy, twisty, silvery buildings and also the amount of construction going on. Charlie reminded me that Qatar has perhaps the highest per-capita income in the world—they are sitting on a natural gas goldmine. I know that HH Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, the Emir of the State of Qatar, has spearheaded a number of academic and cultural projects in the last decade. The Emir has lured a number of American academic institutions to set up satellite campuses in “Education City,” so that Qatar may become a regional and international center of education. Along the same lines, the Emir has funded new museum projects, all with the idea of showcasing the history and culture of the Gulf. That is of course the background to the creation of the Museum of Islamic Art—the stated aims of the Museum are to provide the citizens of the tiny country of Qatar (the population has doubled in the last 7 years to about 1.6 million, and interestingly, Qataris are in the minority of their country) a key means to appreciate and understand “their rightful legacy.” The opening day speeches dedicating the Museum spoke of how important it is to show “Muslims worldwide the historic global connections of the Islamic lands, and through art, the excellence of their intellectual and economic life.” Another important message that echoed in the opening of the Museum was that the Museum might demonstrate for non-Muslims “throughout the world today…how Islam has continually been a tolerant and progressive force, adopting, adapting and passing on ideas within and across its borders.”

Friday night we after we settled in we walked to a well-known Souk or bazaar, in search of a good meal. Charlie and I had studied the “Time Out Doha” magazine in the Movenpick hotel. We only had time for a few meals in town and we wanted them to be good. We debated Thai, Iraqi, and Italian food, settling on Italian—the description in the magazine was just too good to pass up. As we walked to the Souk the construction around town is a little overwhelming. Doha is pretty humid, unlike Jordan, so the subtropical temps made you feel the dinner was really well-earned!

The following morning, after the breakfast buffet, we headed out to the Museum. It wasn’t far from the hotel, well, except, all the construction made it tough to cross the street and have an easy go of it. “Time Out Doha” had said the Museum opened at 10, so we opted for an early entrance in case we stayed a long time. Oh, the perils of humidity! By the time we go to the Museum, I had already soaked through my short—yes, how attractive. We also learned that the magazine was wrong, and the Museum didn’t open until noon. The unforgiving sun made it a very unattractive option to sit and wait 90 minutes until noon. So we trudged back to the hotel and decamp (and for me to change shirts and start all over again).

We decided to take a cab and visit the Arab Museum of Modern Art first since it was already opened. The cab ride was pretty long, but it did afford us the opportunity to see more of Doha and get a sense of the “Education City” project. I think we were the only ones in the museum, but it was designed so well that they are focusing on five Arab artists at the moment and do mini-retrospectives on their work and how their work fits into the continuum of art in the last 60 years. We then hopped the free bus to the Museum of Islamic Art and tried for round two of getting inside the Museum.

I gotta say, it is an impressive building. It is designed by the legendary I.M. Pei, the Chinese-American who grabbed the world’s attention with his glass pyramid in front of the Louvre in 1989.When Pei won the commission for the Museum, he demanded that there be a better piece of earth than what was originally earmarked. He didn’t want the Museum swallowed up by the rest of flashy Doha. So the Museum stands on an artificial island on the Corniche, the walk-way by the bay, facing the new downtown. It is a stunning accomplishment. Staring at the building it is exciting to remember Pei’s own history. Born in China in 1917, Pei moved to the US to study architecture in the mid-1930s and worked with some legends (Gropius and Van der Rohe) at both MIT and Harvard. Here he is decades later, still trying make sense of light and space.

As you approach the building, going over the bridge, you note how simple the design seems, but the more you take in the building, the more it takes on an increasing complexity. First of all, on my third viewing of the building, it had changed colors slightly every time. We drove by it on the way to the hotel near to dusk, and then we saw it in the sunny morning, and now in an afternoon thunderstorm (Yes! We had a thunderstorm in the Gulf—who would’ve thought???) The façade planes come to life in the strong Doha sun, and each time I noted a change in the division of light and shadow. Hmmm….I had read about how Pei had visited a number of mosque sites—Cordoba, Cairo, Damascus, trying to better understand the heart of Islamic architecture. What I enjoyed seeing is how Pei designed an almost Cubist-expression of geometric progression from the octagon to the square and then the square to the circle. Pei had worked to figure out how to make the severe sun work for him with the shadows and the shades of color on the white stone.

When you walk in-oh, the space! The interior space is incredible as it soars up to the top of the Museum, and the glass wall facing you that faces the skyline of downtown Doha. As you leave the Museum and walk to the Education Wing you see the arcades of the courtyard that remind of many mosques. The austerity of the exterior contrasts with the use of decorative patterns and forms inside the building and one is confronted by the surprising, sculptural double Grand Stair. As you ascend you notice how you come out of the grand matrix of geometric interlaces, so well-known and beloved in Islamic art. Each level of the exhibition floors is spanned by glass bridges completing the path of the U-shaped balconies cantilevered around the atrium.

That is just the stunning building! The collections are fine, perhaps no finer than the Metropolitan in New York, but this collection is showcased by the most fascinating glass cases I have ever seen! The rooms are lit in a mysterious way, allowing the objects to emerge from the darkness, lit to underline a particular aspect, theme, or fact, allowing the works to appear to float in space. The intentionally oversized cases (floor to ceiling!) have the most astounding non-reflective glass—it doesn’t seem like there is glass at all. The mostly small items in these cases thus impose their own scale on this vast Museum. Ahhhh…geometry and light follow you through the whole Museum as you ponder the examples of ceramics, manuscripts, rugs, jewelry and paintings. The walls of the galleries are unusual too—an exotic wood that has a natural, visible grain. They must have brushed and gilded the wood to give it an alluring metallic appearance, serving the objects well.

What were my favorites? I love the panels, the stuccoed or wood panels that go back a thousand years with the ubiquitous arabesques. I am a sucker for the gorgeous tiles, the kind I fell in love with back in 2003 with my trips to Spain. Then some ordinary doors to a secular building—but with inscriptions to still guide us: “The wise one is he who has learned a lesson from experience; and the ignorant one is he who does not think of the consequences.” The calligraphic virtuosity is always beautiful, whether a page from the Quran or from the signature of a ruler. I loved the works from Islamic India—there are some stunner paintings reacting to European artists like Bellini and Durer, and the manuscripts always open with a page of radiating illuminated decoration known as a shamsa, which comes from the Arabic for ‘sun.’ There was an excellent exhibit of astrolabes going back 1300 years showing how they understand astronomy, the sun, Mecca, and their place in the world. It was a great afternoon with Charlie as the Pei building kept gifting us with exquisite objects.

We celebrated that night with wonderful Indian food in the Cultural Village and early the next morning we took flights back to Amman, quite happy with the long-awaited pilgrimage to the Museum and the enchantment of I.M. Pei’s building. A colleague of ours will be moving to Doha at the end of the summer. Maybe it won’t be a five-year wait before I am back to watch the play of light and shadow on the building.