Lusail Museum, designed by the Pritzker Prize–winning Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron, will be located on Al Maha Island in Lusail just north of Doha. Lusail was the home of Sheikh Jassim bin Mohamed bin Thani, the Founder of Qatar, and his story will be woven throughout the museum. Sheikh Jassim lived during a period when the western world was captivated by the Arab and Indian Ocean worlds and the Orientalist gaze was burgeoning. In founding the state of Qatar, Sheikh Jassim defended his people’s cultural independence from the Ottomans and the British through a tumultuous period of colonial strife. Qatar today, a cosmopolitan and influential hub, is directly connected to Sheikh Jassim’s legacy — an independent nation with strong international bonds.

The overarching exhibition, Lusail Museum: Tales of a Connected World, comprised almost 250 objects, including paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, manuscripts and decorative arts. The exhibition acted as a ‘prefiguration’ for the future museum, offering innovative and contextual displays to encourage visitors to consider and question the nature of identity presented in the works on display, including complex and challenging issues of race and gender. An immersive, interactive digital trail complemented the exhibition, and activations included a rolling programme of short films by young filmmakers from the Doha Film Institute and soundscapes introducing historical and contemporary musicians from around the world.

The central space of the exhibition was curated by Herzog & de Meuron, who used models, samples and projections to present the evolution of their architectural concept, a concept that merges local materiality with regional vernacular architectural elements to reflect the diversity of cultures across the Arab world.