The main stage of the 30th Doha International Book Fair hosted at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre yesterday a symposium titled “Museums: A Message of Culture and Peace”.
This symposium comes as part of the cultural activities accompanying the exhibition. It ws addressed by Abdulaziz al-Ishaq, head of the General Arts Department of Qatar Museums, and JA Forde, Director of Strategic Partnerships and Community Support at Qatar Museums, while the researcher and writer Mukhtar Khawaja led the stages.
Ford noted that Qatar museums are no different from other museums, as they are an inspiration to those who visited them.
He pointed out that there is a partnership between Qatar Museums and the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, as museums attract students from different educational levels, besides a number of exhibitions have been devoted to educational opportunities for students to understand, for example, how to manufacture jewellery and deal with precious stones and their formation and places to bring them, as these experiences That a student has to interpret what he sees with his own eyes in museums.
For his part, Abdulaziz al-Ishaq spoke about how museums affect peace, as they are a space for the convergence of cultures and civilisations, pointing out that the main goal of collections within museums is that they are a memory of identity and a part of soft power, and one of its methods is to attract the other through culture and pushes dialogue forward and cultural exchange is also important in this regard.
He explained that one of the missions of Qatar Museums is to export culture abroad, saying: “globalising the local and making the local global”, because the other will not accept you unless you accept it in the first place.
He added that most visitors who come to Qatar through cruises, visit the Museum of Islamic Art, the National Museum of Qatar and Souq Waqif, and within two or three hours, they get an impression of the history, culture and heritage of the country and its people.
He said that each museum has its goals. The National Museum of Qatar focuses on the Qatari identity, and narrates the stories of the ancestors and their struggle, as a source of pride and inspiration.
Doha International Book Fair
