Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha has tapped Lebanese architect Lina Ghothem to guide a significant campus enlargement. The information arrives because the Qatari establishment celebrates its fifteenth anniversary, and figures into an bold part of cultural growth underway within the Arabian Gulf nation.
“The Arab Museum of Trendy Artwork is an unrivalled establishment,” Ghothem mentioned in a press release. “This enlargement will provide a exceptional platform for presenting artwork and concepts, significantly by artists from our a part of the world.”
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Ghothem’s plan will deepen Mathaf’s analysis and schooling capabilities, and usually goal to foster richer social interactions between guests, based on a press release from the establishment. The bottom flooring foyer and library, for instance, will probably be redesigned as an open house impressed by majlis (conventional, usually exquisitely embellished, assembly rooms or parlors for receiving company). The Mathaf library is a major cultural house already, because it holds publications from throughout the area; the upgraded house will characteristic these titles together with ones from the Qatar Museums. Following the enlargement, which incorporates an expanded cafe and ebook and present store, it will likely be conceptually repositioned as the center of the museum campus.
The atrium, in the meantime, will acquire a brand new visible landmark: a monumental portrait by Yan Pei-Ming, to be displayed together with beforehand introduced commissions devoted to Qatar’s leaders. Later phases of the enlargement will see the museum’s present plaza and parking space remodeled into studios for artists and designers, together with shared services for ceramics, areas for glass and materials experimentation practices, and a sound studio created in collaboration with artist-composer Tarek Atoui.
Mathaf’s director, Zeina Arida, described the mission as “a brand new chapter” within the museum’s historical past. “By increasing Mathaf’s applications and areas to incorporate residency studios, maker areas and workshops, we’re remodeling the museum into a spot the place artists also can create,” she mentioned.
The Mathaf fee is the most recent in Ghothem’s portfolio for museums and exhibition areas. She is presently at work on the Qatar Pavilion, a everlasting construction within the Giardini for the Venice Biennale; the AlUla Modern Artwork Museum in Saudi Arabia; the Western Vary galleries of the British Museum in London; and a renovation of the Museum am Rothenbaum (MARKK) in Hamburg, Germany. She has beforehand designed the Estonian Nationwide Museum, which opened in 2016.
