DOCSLIB.ORG

'But There Is No Word for Installation in Arabic…' Teaching Exhibition

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
'But There Is No Word for Installation in Arabic…' Teaching Exhibition ‘But There Is no Word for Installation in Arabic…’ Teaching Exhibition Development in Qatar by Dr. Karen Exell Dr. Karen Exell is Lecturer, arlier this year two exhibitions Khalifa Al Thani. Both museums utilise Museum Studies & Degree opened in Qatar’s capital city of a Eurocentric exhibitionary method and Coordinator, MA Museum and Doha: Ana Arabi? (Am I Arab?) visual language—for example, at Mathaf Gallery Practice at University E at the Katara Art Center, and Is the Sea the interior space follows the tradition of College London, Qatar, Doha. >Ê7>¶ at Mathaf: Arab Museum the ‘white cube’ gallery, a homogenising She may be contacted at 1 [email protected]. of Modern Art. The exhibitions were aesthetic serving the universal modernist the product of an intensive three month artistic discourse (Weibel, 2007). These process of exhibition-making, taught as new international museums are dramatic, If you would like to comment on part of the MA in Museum and Gallery formal spaces presenting disciplinary this article or others in this issue, Practice at UCL Qatar, which I direct. narratives of Islamic, modern, and please go to the NAME page on Over the previous two years of teaching contemporary (Arab) art and are yet to Facebook or send us a tweet the programme, two issues have emerged take root in Qatari culture conceptually or @NAMExhibitions. that have influenced my teaching: the socially; they are western-style museums role of international best practice in an rather than locally produced institutions emerging field and how this is adopted, (Exell, 2014a).4 negotiated, and adapted—or not—to the local context; and how museums and In 2011, University College London their work are culturally and conceptually (UCL)5 established a branch campus on understood in the region. Overall what is Doha’s Education City campus with a A programme as clear is that a programme as culturally- remit to deliver postgraduate teaching culturally-rooted rooted as museum studies cannot be and research in cultural heritage, an area introduced to another culture without in which UCL excels through the work as museum addressing issues of cultural translation. of its Institute of Archaeology. The MA This essay will focus on the teaching in Museum and Gallery Practice is a 12 studies cannot of exhibition making within the MA in month intensive programme balancing be introduced Museum and Gallery Practice and the theory and practice whilst attempting to challenges and opportunities that exist in embed this in, and respond to, the local to another this area in Qatar. context (Exell, 2013). One of the central culture without elements of the degree is the curation The Context for Teaching Exhibition- of an exhibition, a student-led project addressing Making in Qatar that runs through the second semester issues of cultural Qatar, the tiny, super-wealthy Gulf and results in an exhibition in one of state located on a peninsula in the Qatar’s cultural institutions. The taught translation. Arabian Gulf, has received extensive element covers aspects of exhibition international media attention in response making, such as the concept-development- to the opening of the Museum of Islamic implementation project structure, Art (MIA; 2008)2 and Mathaf: Arab audiences and communication, evaluation, Museum of Modern Art (2010).3 These developing an online presence and writing museums are overseen by the cultural text for exhibitions. Alongside this the body, Qatar Museums (QM), established students develop their project, managed as Qatar Museums Authority in 2005. through a series of structured meetings This initiative was part of a policy of with me, and a weekly student-led project international visibility and diplomacy meeting. They are given either a collection of the father Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin or topic, and a space, and are tasked with 48 EXHIBITIONIST FALL '14 creating a project team which will then develop and implement an exhibition, drawing on the wider philosophies and theories of museums taught in the first semester and the practical aspects of exhibition making taught as part of this module. The final project exhibition has an opening event and associated programming which runs as part of the Students and participants in the workshop conducted as part of the Is the Sea a Woman? exhibition opening host institutions’ events programme. The at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, April 2014. Courtesy of Lesley Gray. emphasis is on professional best practice, from developing institutional relationships 10 October 2013-22 January 2014), to project management and teamwork. or exhibitions such as Hajj: Journey through Art at MIA (9 October 2013-5 Challenges of Cultural Translation January 2014), curated with the British Generic and specific challenges have Museum. Exhibition-making relies on emerged in the teaching of exhibition extensive outsourcing to consultants, and making in Qatar. Generic challenges this practice means that many Qatari …this experience include team work dynamics and different museum staff gain limited hands-on has helped me levels of engagement with the project, experience. The Qatari students in the which can result in tensions that affect groups, many of whom are QM staff, to gain a better the participants and project. I will focus initially assumed that expertise would be understanding on the challenges arising from the specific bought to undertake certain tasks, despite local context. These derive from the the limited project budget (QAR14,500; of aspects of innovative nature of a student exhibition around $4,000). Working within a budget Qatari culture project in a region where large-scale encourages a creative response to the museum investment and the teaching of requirements of an exhibition and is a and professional museum studies is new, and from the central shaping element of many projects differing cultural understanding of the in the rest of the world, but has not until practice, whilst exhibition project’s nature, aims, and recently been something that needed to allowing the content. be considered in the world’s wealthiest country. Another element to consider is Qatari students The cohort in both years has been that in Qatar the focus of exhibitions is to develop international, with Qatari Nationals often the VIP opening; the dramatic drop- alongside students from as far afield off in visitor numbers thereafter is well- an increased as China, Poland, and the US. This known. The students expressed anxiety discussion focuses on the response to about the catering and other elements of understanding the teaching of the Qatari students in their exhibition openings which may seem of the creative each year’s cohort, as this is the country a superficial concern, but in the region for and in which the teaching is being the quality of a public event in terms potential of their developed. In Qatar most exhibitions of presentation and hospitality has an own practice. are lavishly funded and have a strong enormous social impact. In my approach, international element, such as the recent I have attempted to shift the locus of retrospective of Damien Hirst (Relics; value from the event to the process and 49 EXHIBITIONNIST FALL '14 In the wake of post-modernity and new museological approaches with their focus on community participation and shared authority, the traditional, didactic museum model in operation in Qatar at MIA, Qatar’s flagship museum, is Traditional dhow-boats with the new high rise development of West Bay, Doha, in the distance. Photograph regarded by many in other parts of the by Karen Exell. world as outdated. In addition, this mode of display and interpretation does not engage Qatari Nationals (see Erskine- Loftus 2013), but when Qatari students have been asked to develop alternative approaches that spoke to their interests, they have initially lacked the confidence to contradict the authority of the museum. Qatari culture requires that authority go unquestioned; museums are regarded as offering truths, not interpretations. In addition, in Qatar, a conservative Muslim country, “interpretation” can be associated with the Qur’an, which can only be interpreted by highly-trained religious experts with the required authority. In the context of museums, the term means the practice of using various methods to communicate a subject to a defined audience, who might also input into the interpretation in a dialogic process. Students assigned the role of Interpretation in the exhibition project have expressed confusion each year in The Museum of Islamic Art, Doha. Photograph by Karen Exell. relation to the meaning of “interpretation” as they saw no creative space between the object presented, and the text (or other (continued from page 49) content, and to encourage the students to medium) referring to it; this was regarded develop an holistic understanding of all as description, not interpretation. Such aspects of exhibition-making. These have cultural and conceptual differences been sites of negotiation in both years that constantly reshape the emphases of the student exhibition project has run, and teaching, as close attention is required to this experience has helped me to gain a understand where the student response better understanding of aspects of Qatari is coming from culturally, and if and culture and professional practice, whilst when to guide this position towards a allowing the Qatari students to develop more western approach, i.e. how much an increased understanding of the creative criticality to introduce into a culture 50 potential of their own practice. that operates on an alternative model of EXHIBITIONNIST FALL '14 There was a shift in understanding exhibitions as information disseminators to regarding them as contextual experiences which did not necessarily challenge more orthodox authorities in other contexts. authority with knowledge transmission what kind of information would be References: based on respect for authority. useful in the context of the particular Bourdieu, P.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Museum of Islamic Art and the Discursive Endeavour of Displaying Islamic Art in Qatar Eva-Maria Tepest*
    Museum & Society, 17 (2) 157 ‘Temporary Until Further Notice’: The Museum of Islamic Art and the Discursive Endeavour of Displaying Islamic Art in Qatar Eva-Maria Tepest* Abstract Taking the case of curatorial practices at the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) in Doha, this study analyses practices of exhibiting Islamic art in Qatar. Drawing on interviews, observations and visual material collected during a stay in Doha in November and December 2015, it sheds light on MIA’s conditions, history, and present. Against the backdrop of Michel Foucault’s writings on power/knowledge, I argue that MIA cannot be understood on the basis of a dominant liberal cultural policy paradigm. Rather, it needs to be understood as ‘a dynamic and contingent multiplicity’ (Barad 2007: 147). Notwithstanding, this multiplicity meaningfully relates to Qatar’s shifting political priorities as well as discourses on Islamic art and the exhibition. Key Words: Qatar, Islamic art, cultural policy, museum, Foucault Introduction Museum establishments in Qatar have caused a great stir in the past decade, with Qatar particularly venturing to establish itself as one of the key actors for funding, collecting, and promoting Islamic art, notably through the establishment of the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) in 2008. Due to its enormous hydrocarbon wealth,1 Qatar has undergone significant economic growth since the beginning of the 1970s, making it the world’s highest income country per capita as of 2015.2 Enabled by these enormous revenues Qatar, among other things, has invested heavily in the cultural-educational sector. Within this context and following the coup d’état of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani in 1995, the grander scheme of museum establishments started to get enacted.
    [Show full text]
  • Change the Rule! Opening Reception: Thursday, September 20, 6–8Pm September 20–November 10, 2018 7/F Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central
    Change the Rule! Opening reception: Thursday, September 20, 6–8pm September 20–November 10, 2018 7/F Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central Takashi Murakami, The Lion of the Kingdom that Transcends Death, 2018, acrylic on canvas mounted on aluminum frame, 59 1/8 × 118 1/8 inches (150 × 300 cm) © 2018 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved September , When I manage to snatch the tail of an idea, I must then transport a fragment of it to a completely different region of my brain . Once a deadline is met, that region can relax, so I graft the new idea onto that relaxed region in order to nurture and grow it. This is the process I endlessly repeat, and as such, I can never see the end of it; each day of unease is followed by another, and only for a moment when a project is complete do I get to experience a modicum of liberation. As a distant result of such a thankless, humorless repetition, interesting works get made. —Takashi Murakami Gagosian is pleased to present Change the Rule!, new paintings and sculptures by Takashi Murakami. Murakami seamlessly blends commercial imagery, anime, manga, and traditional Japanese styles and subjects, revealing the themes and questions that connect past and present, East and West, technology and fantasy. His paintings, sculptures, and films are populated by repeated motifs and evolving characters of his own creation. Together with dystopian themes and contemporary references, he revitalizes narratives of transcendence in continuation of the nonconformist legacy of a group of eighteenth-century Japanese artists known as the Edo eccentrics.
    [Show full text]
  • A Cultural Legacy How Katara’S Visual Art Center Is Bringing Artistic Sensibility to Qatar and Fostering a Fledgling Art Industry
    SPECIAL FOCUS A CULTURAL LEGACY HOW KATARA’S VISUAL ART CENTER IS BRINGING ARTISTIC SENSIBILITY TO QATAR AND FOSTERING A FLEDGLING ART INDUSTRY Katara Cultural Village in Doha is home to the Katara Visual Art Center, which is in part focusing on encouraging Qatari artists and raising the profile of the domestic commercial art scene in Qatar. (Image Corbis) SPECIAL FOCUS F Sa’id Costa, curator of the visual arts exhibitions and education programmes speaks to TheEDGE about the importance of engaging Qatari artists with international artists. TheEDGE 45 SPECIAL FOCUS Qatar purchased a Paul Cézanne painting, The Card Players, for more than US$250 million (QR910 million), a record price for an artwork in the modern market. One of five in a series of paintings entitled The Card Players by French painter Paul Cézanne. (Image Corbis) THRIVING INDUSTRY THE QATARI ROYAL FAMILY’S INTEREST IN ART In 2007 the Emir, HH Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, purchased Damien Hirst’s pill cabinet (filled with 6,136 painted, bronze cast pills) Lullaby Spring at Sotheby’s for US$19 million (QR69 million), setting an auction record for a living artist. The Emir’s daughter, Sheikha Al Mayassa bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani chairs the board of the Qatar Museums Authority and his son, Sheikh Hassan bin Mohammad bin Ali Al Thani, founded the museum of modern Arab art Mathaf. 46 TheEDGE SPECIAL FOCUS According to Forbes, Sheikha Al Mayassa bin Hamad bin Al Thani is the most powerful woman in the art world today. Abdulla Salem Desmal Al Kuwari, art workshop supervisor of the Visual Art Center speaks to TheEDGE about how the local concept of art is still a work in process.
    [Show full text]
  • Museums and Cultural Diplomacy Projects in Qatar and the Middle East
    Museums and Cultural Diplomacy Projects in Qatar and the Middle East Sumantro Ghose, Deputy Director, Cultural Diplomacy Projects, Qatar Museums Authority Paper presented at Institute of Cultural Diplomacy Conference, Berlin 17-21 December 2013 Abstract The early 21st century has seen a large expansion in the cultural sector in the Middle East, a development that is most visible in the creation of a number of iconic new museums in the Gulf region, many of which are still under construction. This paper focuses on Qatar and the ambitious projects and cultural exchange programmes of the Qatar Museums Authority, which was founded in 2005 with a remit to develop museums, cultural institutions and heritage sites in the country. QMA has overseen the development of the Museum of Islamic Art and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and in 2012 it launched a series of bilateral cultural exchange programmes that include Qatar Japan 2012 and Qatar UK 2013 Years of Culture. In two of the region’s largest new museum construction projects, new outposts of the Louvre and Guggenheim are currently being built in the United Arab Emirates, whilst in Saudi Arabia the King Abdul Azziz Center for World Culture is due to open in late 2015. This paper explores, from a practical rather than theoretical perspective, the degree to which these new museum projects can be seen as tools for cultural diplomacy. The strategic objectives and aspirations of these countries’ cultural initiatives are similar in many respects, as they are driving social development within their own borders, and redefining each country’s relations with the region and wider global community.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Copenhagen
    Imagining the Past Visitor specific applications for Al Zubarah Archaeological Site, Qatar Kinzel, Moritz; Tanaka, Mina Publication date: 2015 Document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Citation for published version (APA): Kinzel, M., & Tanaka, M. (2015). Imagining the Past: Visitor specific applications for Al Zubarah Archaeological Site, Qatar. Download date: 02. okt.. 2021 Imagining the Past Visitor specific applications for Al Zubarah Archaeological Site, Qatar Moritz Kinzel Mina Tanaka Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies - ToRS Interactive Media & Space Consulting University of Copenhagen Communication & Information Operations Copenhagen, Denmark Dai Nippon Printing Co., LTD.(DNP)Tokyo, Japan [email protected] [email protected] Abstract— Since the inscription of Al Zubarah Archaeological archaeological research are going hand in hand and are Site on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the number of visitors interlinked to reach a common understanding [2], [7], [8], [9], has almost tripled. To ensure the protection and preservation of [10]; [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19]. the fragile remains, visitors have only limited access to the site. Therefore it is important to enhance the visitor experience and to II. EXCAVATIONS AND SITE PRESENTATION support the dissemination of results of the ongoing excavations. Besides traditional techniques, the Qatar Islamic Archaeology The conservation strategy for Al Zubarah Archaeological and Heritage Project in cooperation with DNP have developed Site foresees that there should be only limited access to the site two mobile applications with AR-elements and interactive to protect the fragile vestiges [7],[8],[9]. By defining clear components to engage especially young visitors to explore the site marked visitor and service (vehicle) tracks, used by the and to reflect upon the past.
    [Show full text]
  • Figure 1. Jianguo Village
    Museum and Art Education as a Response to Place in place may not be prominent in their programming. However, as Doha, Qatar1,2 an integral part of culture, the geographic location of people has a profound effect on various aspects of education and expectations Melanie L Buffington Virginia Commonwealth University of art. Also, in our frenetic contemporary world, finding and maintaining connections to history, culture, and communities can be a Maral Bedoyan Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art challenge (Gray & Graham, 2007). In this article, we address the theme of place through the specific ABSTRACT In this article we address the theme of place through the lens of the signifi- example of the nation of Qatar, focusing on a museum in the capital cant and recent changes in the nation of Qatar and how a particular museum, of Doha. Qatar is a rapidly changing country with an overt goal of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, has addressed its geographic location building a knowledge-based economy (Qatar Foundation, n.d.). This in Doha, Qatar. Through a description of the recent efforts to transform to a goal is helping to expand its art scene and is creating changes in its knowledge-based economy, focusing on the arts and education in Qatar, we educational system. Because of these factors, Mathaf: Arab Museum set the stage for how the student art exhibits at Mathaf are responsive to the of Modern Art provides an interesting illustration of a contemporary local area. Through these recent exhibitions, Mathaf is offering opportunities approach to museum education that addresses the concept of place for young people in Qatar to make art in ways that relate to their local context and the rapid changes in the region.
    [Show full text]
  • TAKASHI MURAKAMI Born in Tokyo, Japan, 1962 Education Phd, Tokyo
    TAKASHI MURAKAMI Born in Tokyo, Japan, 1962 Education PhD, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Tokyo, Japan MFA, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Tokyo, Japan BFA, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Department of Traditional Japanese Painting (Nihon-ga), Tokyo, Japan Lives and works in Tokyo, Japan and New York, NY One-Person Exhibitions 2018 Heads<->Heads, Galerie Perrotin, New York, NY Change the Rule!, Gagosian, Hong Kong Takashi Murakami in Wonderland, Galerie Perrotin, Shanghai, China 2017 Murakami by Murakami, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg, MCA Chicago, Chicago, IL; traveled to Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX Takashi Murakami's Superflat Consideration on Contemporary Ceramics, Towada Art Center, Aomori, Japan Lineage of Eccentrics, Ann and Graham Gund Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA Under the Radiation Falls, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia The Deep End of the Universe, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY 2016 Galerie Perrotin, Paris, France Takashi Murakami's Superflat Collection: From Shōhaku and Rosanjin to Anselm Kiefer, Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama, Japan 2015 Art Projects Ibiza, Lune Rouge, Ibiza Gran Hotel, HEART (exhibition at four venues), Ibiza, Spain Takashi Murakami: The 500 Arhats, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan Ensō (Pop-up show organized by Galerie Perrotin), Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2014 In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow, Gagosian Gallery,
    [Show full text]
  • The Implications of Petro-Philanthropy in the Museum of Islamic Art at Doha, Qatar
    Constructing Monuments, Constructing Time: The Implications of Petro-Philanthropy in the Museum of Islamic Art at Doha, Qatar Research Thesis Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with research distinction in History of Art in the undergraduate colleges of The Ohio State University By Ryan Mitchell The Ohio State University April 2017 Project Advisor: Dr. Kristina Paulsen, Department of History of Art Secondary Project Advisor: Dr. Thomas Davis, Department of English 1 Hotels, apartment buildings, and corporate headquarters with shimmering, plate-glass façades to dominate much of the rapidly changing skyline of Qatar’s capital city, Doha. As one travels along Doha’s waterfront promenade, the Corniche, away from the jostling skyscrapers of the West Bay business district, museums, cultural centers, and parks replace the corporate headquarters and luxury developments. A myriad of structures that surround the Souq Waqif, a re-furbished historical market that was shortlisted for an Aga Khan Award for Architecture in the 2008-2010 cycle. They reflect the efforts of the Qatari government to style Doha as an international center of culture: The Sheikh Abdulla Bin Zaid Al Mahmoud Islamic Cultural Center, its spiral minaret that imitates the famed original in the complex of the Great Mosque of Samarra; the staring eyes and too-cheery colors of Takashi Murakami’s Ego are painted on the white cube of the AlRIWAQ contemporary art space; and the historic areas near Qatar’s administrative and symbolic center, the Amiri Diwan, that have been recently restored (Fig. 1-2). Curving into the Persian Gulf from the proliferating development along the Corniche is Doha’s most internationally-celebrated cultural institution: the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) (Fig.
    [Show full text]
  • Reconstructing Qatari Heritage: Simulacra and Simulation
    Journal of Literature and Art Studies, June 2017, Vol. 7, No. 6, 679-689 doi: 10.17265/2159-5836/2017.06.007 D DAVID PUBLISHING Reconstructing Qatari Heritage: Simulacra and Simulation Mariam Ibrahim Al-mulla Qatar University, Doha, Qatar Qatar today focuses so much on reconstructing its cultural heritage. It is clear that the reconstruction of Qatari heritage has stemmed from a nostalgic mood. Thus, the government subsumed that heritage into certain interpretations and readings. Therefore, as presented today, Qatari heritage is no longer a self-referential heritage of an indigenous culture. Rather, it has become a principle to reflect the social and economic existence of the Qatari community along with other global communities. The mass use of heritage and the implementation of Western museum culture, however, might be viewed by some as the importation of a culture rather than the preservation of an existing one. To minimise such potential problem, the government opted to ignore any distinctions between representing heritage, interpreting it, or imposing new ideas and thinking around it. Instead, it has focused on introducing a heritage based on linking images of foreign elements that characterise Qatari heritage with new social and economic experiences. Keywords: Qatari heritage, Souk Waqif, Qatari architecture, Qatari traditions, cultural heritage in Qatar, Museum of Islamic Art Introduction This paper raises an essential question, which is why Qatar is putting the wealth generated in the last 40 years from its oil and natural gas reserves into the creation and concentration in cultural heritage that aims to reorder its cultural codes. Therefore, I am suggesting within my investigation the need to consider what lies between the use of the ordering codes and the order itself.
    [Show full text]
  • Copyrighted Material
    COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL 20 c01.indd 20 23/11/2014 20:06 Sarina Wake eld 21 c01.indd 21 23/11/2014 20:06 How might interpretations Museums have been present in the Gulf since Jean Nouvel’s design for the National the 1950s,1 and since 2000 there has been a Museum, located on a prominent site in of the past be informing proliferation of state-led large-scale ‘iconic’ Doha and scheduled for completion in the culture of tomorrow? projects, many of which are still under 2016,draws inspiration from the desert rose, construction. Like their counterparts in Asia ‘a mineral formation of crystallized sand Sarina Wake eld, a and the West, museum projects in the Gulf found in the briny layer just beneath the specialist in heritage and are not immune to the desire for iconic desert’s surface’. 4 A building information buildings by invited internationally recognised modelling (BIM) project was developed by museum development architects. Many of these developments have Gehry Technologies to ensure the accuracy in the Middle East, been highly criticised for trying to replicate and workability of the complex design, Western-style museums and for ‘importing which consisted of ‘tilting, interpenetrating provides an overview of culture’. However, by analysing the disks that de ne the pavilion’s oors, walls the form and function of architectural form and the function of some and roofs’5 and seeks to establish an iconic contemporary museums of these new museums, in particular those in image for the museum. Nouvel’s design Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, it links the inside and outside of the museum in Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi is possible to see how different aspects of the by incorporating a 110,000-square-metre Arabia and the UAE.
    [Show full text]
  • V&A Pearls Release FINAL
    Pearls V&A and Qatar Museums Authority exhibition Sponsored by Shell 21 September 2013 – 19 January 2014 www.vam.ac.uk/pearls | #pearls A pearl-drop earring worn by Charles I at his execution in 1649, magnificent pearl tiaras worn by European nobility and a necklace of cultured pearls given to Marilyn Monroe by Joe DiMaggio in 1954 are among the incredible array of jewels and other objects on display in a new exhibition at the V&A. Organised in partnership with the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA), the exhibition explores the history of pearls from the early Roman Empire to the present, and is a highlight event of the Qatar UK 2013 Year of Culture. On display are over 200 pieces of jewellery and works of art showcasing the extraordinary variety of colour and shape of natural and cultured pearls. The exhibition examines how pearls have been employed over centuries in both East and West as a symbol of status and wealth, how tastes vary in different cultures as well as the changing designs of jewellery with pearls. The exhibition begins with an insight into the natural history of pearls showcased by a rare collection of molluscs from the Qatar Museums Authority and the pearl-fishing trade from across the Gulf to Europe and Asia, since Antiquity. A magnificent selection of natural pearls from the Gulf demonstrates how Gulf pearls have long been some of the most desirable and valuable in the world. The opening section also reveals the often dangerous working methods of pearl divers and shows the trading practices of pearl merchants in the Gulf, together with examples of equipment required for weighing and valuing pearls.
    [Show full text]
  • Delegates' Guide Ful Ation
    USEFUL DELEGATES’ GUIDE INFORMATION Event’s programme & useful information on Qatar 1 CONTETS CONFERENCE DATE & VENUE 4 PROGRAMME 5 CONFERENCE INFORMATION 5 AIRPORT TRANSPORT 6 VISA PROCUREMENT 6 ACCOMODATION 6 ACCREDITATION 7 INTERPRETATION 7 INTERNET CONNECTION 7 USEFUL INFORMATION ON DOHA 8 Climate 8 Code Of Conduct 8 Shopping 9 Getting Around 9 Time Zone 9 Electricity 10 Water 10 Language 10 Banking And Currency Exchange 10 Useful Telephone Numbers 10 2 CONFERENCE DATE PROGRAMME 30 April to 2 May 2011 30 April 2011 CONFERENCE VENUE 18:30 - 20:30 Opening Ceremony and Official Conference Opening Sheraton Doha Resort & Convention Hotel Al Corniche St. 20:30 Welcome Dinner P.O. Box 6000 Doha – Qatar 1 May 2011 Telephone: + 974 4 485 4444 Fax : + 974 4 483 23 23 09:00 – 17:30 Day 1 of the Conference Email : [email protected] www.sheratondoha.com 19:00 Performance by the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra at the Katara Opera Hall 20:00 Gala Dinner at Katara Cultural Village 2 May 2011 09:00 – 16:30 Day 2 of the Conference 16:30 – 17:00 Closing Ceremony 18:30 Transfer to Qatar Foundation for visit of Arab Museum of Modern Art and dinner hosted by the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) CONFERENCE INFORMATION Conference information can be found on the dedicated website www.wcse2011.qa/ and the IOC’s webpage www.olympic.org doha2011. These pages are regularly updated with the latest Conference information and programme updates. On-line registration details and additional information can be obtained by contacting the following e-mail address: [email protected].
    [Show full text]