Wassan al Khudairi, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art

Marisa Mazia Katz, on the road in the Arab country of Qatar in 2011, is joined by Wassan al Khudairi, the acting director and chief curator for Qatar’s nearly two-year-old Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art. Located in Doha, the Gulf country’s capital, the museum’s collection is the result of nearly twenty years of patronage by founder Sheikh Hassan bin Mohamed bin Ali Al Thani. Katz visited the Sajjil exhibit, which in Arabic means "acts of recording." The show featured an impressive cross section of Arab art produced over the past century. Just across town on the grounds of the Museum of Islamic Art, was the Told/Untold/Retold exhibition curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Felrath of the curatorial and consulting group Art Reoriented. For this exhibition the duo commissioned 23 works from contemporary artists including Mounir Fatmi, Youssef Nabil and Lara Baladi. Katz sat down with Wassan to talk about her role at Mathaf and the emergence of Qatar as the Gulf’s museum capital.

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