Museum of Islamic Art in Doha (Qatar)

A NEW AWAKING OF THE ARABIC SPIRIT

Opening of the Museum of the Islamic art in Qatar represents one of most important cultural events in the Arab world in the last few decades.

The importance of establishing of such institutions is manifold. Although Arabs through its history gifted a grandiose arts, in the last hundred years a cultural institutions did not exist, which would treat the artistic heritage of the Islamic arts significantly and systematically. However, this art was presented in national museums sporadically and inadequately. In simple words, in a large part of the Arab world, particularly in the countries of the Gulf, museums of Islamic arts did not exist, so its good presentation was overdue.

The only phenomenon of the museum of Islamic arts or specific collections, firstly appeared in the Western countries, and that interest began in the 19th century, by establishing of the oriental studies and general interest in arts of the Orient, and which had the influence on the very art of the West, first, with its modernistic tendencies.

The Western museums competed over larger collection of the artistic objects from the east, and the colonial government, which made it easy transfer of the artistic heritage from the Islamic countries to the western museums, supported them.

Many exhibits that we see today in a large museum collections of European and American cities, were illegally transferred, while some of them came through buying off and gifts.

However, although that process of “filling” of the Western museums with the objects of Islamic arts, due to ignorance and absence of value for the own artistic heritage by the Muslims, can view as negative, in that way, even paradoxically, few master pieces of Islamic arts were saved from destruction.

The rest of the article you can read in the magazine.