Qatar Museums working on 10-year plan to fuse museology with heritage

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Doha, Qatar: Qatar Museums is working on a 10-year plan to seamlessly blend museology with the nation’s rich heritage and diverse collections.

Sheikha Amna Al Thani, Chief of Museum and Heritage Development at Qatar Museums, revealed this initiative during a recent episode of “The Power of Culture” podcast, hosted by Qatar Museums Chairperson, H E Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al Thani.

The strategic roadmap aims to craft complementary experiences across various museums, each spotlighting unique narratives and themes. Over the next eight years, the museum will experiment with diverse themes and narratives while concurrently nurturing heritage sites. Originally conceived for the World Cup in 2022, this endeavour will span a decade, focusing on the seamless integration of museology with heritage and general collections.

“What we’re trying to do here is create complementary experiences with our different museums where one highlights one story, the other is more about an in-depth tale of a theme. So over the next eight years in development, we will be prototyping a lot of the themes, narratives, and in parallel, we are developing our heritage sites."

Sheikha Amna added: “And this is a huge exercise that we’ve started for the World Cup, but it will carry over the next 10 years and we’re working on a full 10-year plan to integrate museology with the heritage and also our general collections,” said.

Sheikha Amna is also the Director of the National Museum of Qatar (NMoQ),

“The museum in essence is about ideas around movement and travel. So by default, once people visit the museum and they are at Lusail, they will be interested to explore Al Wajba Fort because Al Wajba Fort is also something that’s very much part of the DNA of the story of Lusail and Sheikh Jassim. And it will be an emanating museum to other heritage sites, but also to our other museums because once they’ve learned about Sheikh Jassim and Lusail, they might want to go to the National Museum and learn more and explore, for example, the story of Al Wajba because it’s dealt at length at the National Museum.” Al Wajbah Fort is one of the oldest forts in the country and is located in the locality of Al Wajbah in Al Rayyan, situated 15km west of Doha.

Meanwhile, the forthcoming Lusail Museum, located in the residence of Qatar’s founding statesman, Sheikh Jassim bin Mohammed bin Thani, will further enrich Qatar’s cultural landscape, joining the esteemed portfolio of Qatar Museums.

Moreover, Sheikha Amna underscored Qatar Museums’ extensive international collaborations, encompassing loans, exhibitions, and museography expertise.

“With the National Museum, since we’ve opened, we’ve gotten a lot of questions from international institutions that are in the development phase of how we have devised our museography around this innovative technology that we have at the National Museum and it’s always about how did we integrate it, how did we work with sound, there’s all these practical questions of museum development that we often get and we have a number of collaborations in the pipeline in terms of development but not only do we work internationally in the development projects but we also have some exciting collaborations with pre-existing museums that have been open for many years.”

“It’s not only about our collaboration in the Islamic art galleries but we do have future collaborations on Oriental Arts and Lusail Museum,” she emphasised.

Meanwhile, on what she hopes for visitors to experience in Qatar, she said: “There’s so much on offer, first of all, there’s something for everyone in terms of what we have. I’m hoping that people will get to enjoy our museums, visit our heritage sites. And even if they get to do one of the many that we have, I really want them to enjoy it and reflect on the different things that we’ve tried to portray and communicate.”

“We also have a lot of access in terms of our websites and infographics that we’ve offered. There are infopacks for people who require more information and I hope that people get to enjoy all these offers that we put out. And also there’s lots and lots of shopping and entertainment, not only our museums and exhibitions and the festivals that we have on.”