Rising from its own island in the Arabian Gulf, the monumental Museum of Islamic Art, designed by I. M. Pei (1917–2019) in 2008, stands without peers in the ever-developing skyline of Doha, Qatar. Its white cubist form exists as an isolated sculpture in the round, which can be appreciated equally from the towering, experimental skyscrapers of the city’s West Bay, the seven-kilometer seaside corniche, and the extended arm of the park that cradles it. Architecture and cultural projects have played a defining role in the rapid development of Qatar as a nation, but it is Pei’s design that first placed it on the global cultural map, changing the contours of Islamic art history and introducing a powerful new center for the collection and display of historical Islamic works. During my time at the Center, I explored unpublished material in the I. M. Pei Papers at the Library of Congress. In examining design plans and correspondence related to the Museum of Islamic Art, I was able to reconstruct the architect’s process and articulate how negotiations between Pei’s firm, European art dealers, Qatari bureaucrats, royals, and Western academics shaped the narrative of Islamic art expressed in this landmark building. 

I consider the Museum of Islamic Art as an example of cultural sponsorship in the service of nation-building, illuminating the networks of global collecting, design, and display that brought it to fruition. By integrating a formal reading of the monument with official narratives and archival research, I argue that the concept and inauguration of the Museum of Islamic Art marshaled older, essentialist, Western-constructed narratives about Islamic art history to situate Qatar—a new nation that plays little role in the traditional narratives in the field—as the inheritor of these vast, earlier traditions. In evaluating its evolving mission, Pei’s modernist interpretation of essential Islamic form, and Jean-Michel Wilmotte’s organization and design of the interior galleries, I argue that the 2008 museum adapted certain Western, Orientalist narratives of Islamic art history, which have been roundly critiqued and dismissed in contemporary scholarship. However, it does so not simply as a passive example of self-Orientalizing, but as an active strategy to bolster its own national claims. 

An article deriving from this research is currently under review. It will also be incorporated into my larger book project, “Inheriting an Islamic Golden Age: Globalism, Nationalism, and Islamic Art History in the Architecture of the Arabian Gulf.” In this manuscript, I investigate the integration of classical forms of Islamic art in contemporary architecture and museum display in the Arabian Gulf. The narrative of Islamic art as a cohesive discipline is based on the colonial, Orientalist premise that Islamic cultural production was monolithic—in direct contrast to the diverse complexity of artistic traditions in the West. In this narrative, the Arabian Gulf plays little role. Focal points of more recent architectural patronage and museum sponsorship, such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, were never centers of major empires in the premodern world. As such, they lack the early architectural monuments and artistic masterpieces favored by art historians. However, in the 21st century, the Arabian Gulf has emerged as a major center for collecting and displaying Islamic art.

My project explores how the rapidly developing oil-rich nations of the Arabian Peninsula present themselves as inheritors of classical Islamic art as articulated in Western historiography, even though none of the canonical works were produced there. It argues that in the ongoing quest to find a balance between local and global identities to serve the multinational populations of the region, a reliance on Islamic artistic forms shifts the center of gravity away from the West and toward the Islamic world. In studying such interventions, I argue that these new nations are upending traditional narratives of the art-historical canon, Orientalism, and nationalism while writing a new chapter in the postcolonial culture of the Middle East. This study is, ultimately, a reflection on the impact of the art-historical narratives we craft. What happens when the problematic stories we tell as art historians are adapted by young nations to interpret their own identities?

University of Wisconsin–Madison
Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellow, May–June 2024

Jennifer Pruitt has returned to her position as the Howard and Ellen Louise Schwartz Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.