Karen Exell - Modernity and the Museum in the Arabian Peninsula

I would like to dedicate this volume to my students on the MA in Museum and Gallery Practice at UCL Qatar, who provided insight and inspiration throughout the research and writing process, and to Oscar, the ideal writing companion. To my family also, as ever, and in particular to Beth.

CONTENTS

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When I moved to Qatar in 2011 to set up the MA in Museum and Gallery Practice at UCL Qatar, the Doha campus of University College London, the Museum of Islamic Art and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art had been in operation for just a few years, and the suite of Saadiyat Island Cultural District museums, including the planned Louvre Abu Dhabi and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, had recently been initiated. The worlds attention was on the region as these spectacular projects took shape, and it seemed to many that they epitomised all there was to know about museums in the region. However, it soon became clear that while these projects represent a high-profile state-level agenda of branding and global engagement, they are far from representative, and the museum landscape beyond them was rich and deep. In addition, there was a lack of literature on the new projects that took an analytical stance, and almost nothing on the museums and collections beyond them. This book came into being as a result of my own curiosity about regional museological processes and what they meant on the ground, as opposed to in the Western media, the need to develop literature that could support the teaching of a regionally focused museum studies postgraduate programme, and a desire to inform a wider audience of the nature of museums and collecting practices, in themselves informative of broader contemporary socio-cultural and political processes at work in the Arabian Peninsula region. The book is the final stage of a four-year project that has encompassed a conference, Museums in Arabia at the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, in June 2014 (supported by the Qatar National Research Fund and UCL Qatar), and two co-edited volumes, Cultural Heritage in the Arabian Peninsula: Debates, Discourses and Practices (Ashgate, 2014) and Museums in Arabia: Transnational Practices and Regional Processes (Ashgate, 2016, forthcoming). It offers a snapshot of the museological landscape in the Arabian Peninsula during the period 201215, capturing the range of practices and processes at work in this rapidly transforming region, as a contribution to a broader understanding of an aspect of regional cultural production at a specific moment in time.

I would like to thank first and foremost all the people who gave their time to meet me and discuss their museums and collections over the course of the last four years, many of whom wish to remain anonymous, and this has been respected. In particular, I would like to thank Saif Marzooq Al Shamlan, who invited me to attend his diwaniyya in Kuwait and visit his private museum, and his son Faisal Al Shamlan, who hosted me during my stay in Kuwait in August 2014. Throughout the research process, Mohammed Al Sayegh has been extremely helpful arranging meetings and setting up connections in Qatar and Kuwait, and deserves special thanks. Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim Al Thani and his daughter, Al Anood, kindly gave their time to be interviewed in the early stages of the work. The artists Ben Barbour and Monira Al Qadiri have generously given me images of their work to use, and indeed, a talk given by Monira Al Qadiri in Mathaf in 2015 was particularly inspiring in relation to the spectacular new museums under construction. Throughout the last four years my students on the MA in Museum and Gallery Practice have proved insightful in their comments and observations on regional developments, and indeed I have included some of their research within the forthcoming discussions. Rob Carter, Professor of Arabian and Middle Eastern Archaeology at UCL Qatar, provided valuable feedback on the first two chapters, and my research assistant, Giorgio Piga was indispensable in supporting the preparation of the manuscript and as the first reader. Finally, I am grateful to UCL Qatar for the provision of research funding to allow this project to be completed.