During the Games, Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) have set up a number of exhibitions around town to entertain and educate the masses. I think all the mini-exhibitions contain parts of greater collections that are normally housed in the Museum (which is currently closed for renovations), the Photographic Museum (which is currently under construction; and only just), the Museum of Islamic Arts (which looks finished but doesn’t open until next year), and some other places around town we have yet to discover. But to make things easier the nice people at QMA have nicely set up these exhibitions in central locations for us all.
Today we headed off to one of the conference halls at the Sheraton Hotel – Al Majlis Hall. In this one location we were treated to “Lost World Returns” (dinosaur bones and bits and pieces), “Mughal Jewellery Exhibition” (a nice collection of very old and impressive Indian bling) and the “Traditional Costumes Exhibition” (which I guess is self-explanatory).
A couple of things that we were more impressed with than anything else were the freebies. The first thing was all these exhibitions are free. As you walk in to each section you are handed a rather nicely produced soft cover book with lots of photos and explanations of the exhibition. Apart from that Ashur was given three bags of goodies as we wandered around… one QMA bag of goodies, another for the dinosaur exhibition, and then a final one, which had a very nicely boxed QMA branded coffee set (I think that one may have been meant for the parents). We also purchased a beautiful “Lost World Returns” book which only cost 50 QAR; apparently a special price during the games, which doesn’t really make sense since the exhibition is only on during the games… but very cheap regardless!
After that we headed off to Fahd Bin Ali Palace, just next to the beautiful mosque behind Emiri Diwan (the closest thing we have to a government house here). Here we were treated to some classic cars from one of the Sheiks private collections, the “Qatari Historical Photos Exhibition”, and “From Cordoba to Samarkand” (some key works from the Islamic Arts Museum). All very impressive and another no cost venue… although a bit light on the “freebies” this time around! Once again though we bought ourselves a beautiful book on the Islamic Artworks for a “games special” QAR 50!
As a side note, the wind when we were leaving the Palace was the coldest we have felt here… believe it or not it felt icy!
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