Across Borders
QATAR → AMERICAS
New York International Residency 2018
Q+A JANUARY 2026
Doha’s Fire Station, a contemporary art hub and residency space, runs an International Residency Programme that enables Qatari artists to live and work abroad. Its New York Residency, in partnership with the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn, provides studios, mentorship and networking. Alumni include photographer and filmmaker Sara Al Obaidly, Qatari-American painter and experimental photographer Yousef Bahzad and multidisciplinary artist Mubarak Al Thani. Many of the International Residency artists have gone on to exhibit internationally.
Ruwad: The Pioneering Contemporary Arts of Qatar 2018
Presented by the Qatar-America Institute in partnership with Reconnecting Arts – a Qatari platform supporting emerging Middle Eastern creatives – Ruwad (which means “pioneers” in Arabic) showcased Qatar-based artists, both established and up-and-coming, at a pop-up gallery in downtown Washington DC. One of the participating artists was Emelina Soares, who presented a patterned carpet created with sand from the dunes of Qatar and natural dyes from India. The carpet was constantly altered by visitors walking on it.
Qatar Gallery at The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2022
In 2022, Qatar Museums entered into a formal exchange agreement with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, supporting exhibitions, loans and scholarly collaboration. To mark the partnership, the Met named a gallery for art of the Umayyad and Abbasid periods (7th-13th centuries) the Qatar Gallery. The initiative followed more than a decade of cooperation between Qatar Museums and the Met, strengthening the organisations’ shared commitment to Islamic art.
A Musical Encounter: Sounds of Qatar and Argentina 2025
In 2025, Qatar launched a Year of Culture partnership with Argentina and Chile, presenting exhibitions, performances and cross-cultural programming across the three countries. The opening featured a landmark concert by the Qatar Philharmonic at Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Argentina, marking the Qatari institution’s debut on a South American stage.Qatar has strong ties with the Americas, as showcased through its Years of Culture programme, which has paired the nation with the United States in 2021, Argentina and Chile in 2025, and Mexico in 2026 to foster creative and cultural exchange across continents.
AMERICAS → QATAR
Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar 1988
Established in 1998, Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar) was the first American university to open in Education City in Doha. The campus offers programmes in fashion, graphic and interior design, and painting and printmaking. Over the last quarter century it has played a pivotal role in shaping Qatar’s creative industries. Other leading US institutions – including Cornell, Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern and Texas A&M – have since established permanent branch campuses in Education City.
Doha Tribeca Film Festival 2009-2012
Launched through a partnership between the Doha Film Institute and Tribeca Enterprises – the New York-based media and entertainment company founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff – the Doha Tribeca Film Festival was an annual five-day film festival that attracted over 50,000 visitors. It brought Arab and international cinema to local audiences and fostered Qatar’s emerging film industry, welcoming global celebrities including De Niro, Salma Hayek and Mira Nair. East-West/West-East
by Richard Serra 2014
One of the most iconic works of public art in Qatar is the late Richard Serra’s East-West/West-East. Commissioned by Qatar Museums and unveiled in 2014, the installation spans over a kilometre in the Brouq Nature Reserve, where four steel plates, each more than 14m high, cut across the desert floor. It isn’t his only commission in Qatar: in 2011, 7 was unveiled in MIA Park – an 80ft-high heptagonal tower rising from a platform at the water’s edge. It’s the tallest sculpture Serra ever conceived, and was his first permanent work in the Middle East.
Jeff Koons: Lost in America November 2021-March 2022
Curated by Massimiliano Gioni, artistic director of New York’s New Museum, and staged as part of the Qatar-USA 2021 Year of Culture, this landmark show was Jeff Koons’s first exhibition in the Gulf region. It featured more than 60 works by the artist spanning four decades. Koons returned to Doha in 2022 with Dugong, a 21m-high “inflatable” sculpture commissioned for the FIFA World Cup Qatar that depicted one of the country’s most cherished native species. Other notable exhibitions of American artists in Doha to date have included KAWS in 2019, Virgil Abloh in 2021, Dan Flavin and Donald Judd in 2023, and Ellsworth Kelly in 2024.
Alongside a rapidly growing cultural exchange, Qatar and the United States have strong economic relations, with trade between the two nations reaching an estimated US$11.5 billion in 2024.
