Qatar Museums Chairperson Opens Three New Exhibitions at M7

Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums, opened three new exhibitions at M7, Qatar’s epicentre for innovation and entrepreneurship in fashion, design and technology: “Around the World in Jewellery,” “ERDEM: About Time, About Her,” and “Expanded Tradition: Contemporary Craft Practices in Mexico.”

The three exhibitions opened as part of the Qatar Creates Fall/Winter 2026–2027 season, which features an extensive programme of initiatives, exhibitions and cultural events reflecting Qatar’s continued commitment to cultural exchange, creative dialogue and stronger global connections.

A press tour of the three exhibitions preceded the opening. During the tour, the exhibition curators explained the works on display, their distinguishing features and the messages they convey to audiences, whom they invited to visit the exhibitions.

Maha Ghanim Al Sulaiti, Director of M7, told Qatar News Agency that M7 has become an important centre within Qatar’s creative community since its launch five years ago. She said the centre presents several exhibitions each season, with this season featuring three different exhibitions, each telling a distinct story and offering an important opportunity to highlight relationships among different museums and their collections.

Regarding the impact of such exhibitions on Qatari creatives and designers and how they can benefit from them, Al Sulaiti explained that M7 presents leading international brands and brings them to Qatar alongside its programmes, initiatives and projects, positively influencing the country’s creative landscape.

She said this activity, in turn, creates dialogue between Qatari creatives and designers and their counterparts worldwide, leading to exchanges of expertise, ideas and experiences and allowing Qatar’s creative community to encounter them at close range.

Addressing M7’s future projects, Al Sulaiti said that, in addition to its exhibitions, the centre organises programmes that create spaces for creatives by providing experiences and opportunities in Qatar and worldwide to support them. She noted that M7 has partnerships with numerous similar organisations around the world, including Fashion Trust Arabia, which focuses on Arab creatives and designers and is the first initiative of its kind in the region, providing pivotal opportunities through grants and high-level professional mentorship to empower designers from the region and support their readiness to enter the global market.

Al Sulaiti added that, as an incubator for creatives, M7 offers programmes that prepare them to enter Arab and international competitions, providing a fertile environment for accessing global markets.

Qatar Museums presents “Around the World in Jewellery” in collaboration with L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts. The exhibition’s objects explore jewellery’s position as one of humanity’s oldest and most enduring expressions of cultural identity.

The exhibition is the largest-ever presentation of jewellery from Qatar Museums’ collections and is enriched by a selection of creations from the Van Cleef & Arpels patrimonial collection. It brings together more than 500 pieces of jewellery and art objects, including adornments, artworks, photographs and sculptures from diverse cultures, geographical regions and historical periods, some of which are being shown to the public for the first time.

The exhibition’s objects reflect the depth of the National Collection of Qatar and the holdings of the National Museum of Qatar, the Museum of Islamic Art and the future Lusail Museum. Through them, the exhibition presents a sweeping narrative told by objects carrying profound personal, social and symbolic meanings, asking why people adorn themselves and what jewellery reveals about those who made, wore, exchanged, inherited and preserved it.

The exhibition is structured around seven main themes: Sea & Ocean, Nature, Cosmos, Body Adornment, Status, Customs & Ceremonies, and Protection. Together, the themes reveal the multiple meanings adornment has carried across civilisations and illuminate the varied roles jewellery has played in human experience.

The exhibition invited families to visit the “Children’s Piazza,” a carefully designed interactive space for young visitors aged four to ten. Filled with engaging and playful activities that encourage learning and discovery, the space occupies the heart of the main exhibition and mirrors its central thematic structure, making it the first exhibition area at M7 dedicated to children.

Also inaugurated as part of the Qatar Creates Fall/Winter 2026–2027 season was “ERDEM: About Time, About Her.” Presented as part of the Qatar Canada and Mexico 2026 Year of Culture, the exhibition marks the twentieth anniversary of the House of ERDEM and explores the evolution of its designer’s creative practice and the refined visual language that has become a hallmark of its work.

The exhibition demonstrates fashion’s ability to tell cultural stories by weaving together personal memory and artistic tradition. Across five thematic chapters, it explores the precision and poetic sensibilities of British-Turkish designer Erdem Moralioglu’s work.

A major retrospective highlights Moralioglu’s career as an internationally acclaimed designer. The exhibition includes 150 pieces from ERDEM, encompassing garments, early sketches, mementos, personal documents and design-studio materials, alongside selected works from the Museum of Islamic Art’s collections, including paintings, sculptures and decorative art objects.

“The Human Hand: In the Atelier” traces Erdem Moralioglu’s formative years and the development of his practice through early sketches, university work, personal objects and atelier materials. “Typologies: ERDEM Codes” examines the recurring visual language of the House.

“Objects of Affection” places Erdem Moralioglu’s garments in dialogue with selected works from the Museum of Islamic Art’s collection, while “The Muse” explores prominent personalities whose lives and stories inspired the designer’s work.

“Expanded Tradition: Contemporary Craft Practices in Mexico” is organised by Qatar Museums in collaboration with the Years of Culture initiative. A headline programme of the Qatar Canada and Mexico 2026 Year of Culture, it celebrates a new generation of Mexican artisans reinterpreting craft practices inherited across generations by repurposing and reimagining traditional techniques, materials and forms in response to contemporary contexts.

The exhibition features artisans from throughout Mexico working across disciplines that include clothing and textile design, jewellery, furniture design and pottery. It presents more than 100 objects, including decorative vessels made from gourds, works in white clay and adobe sand, and small clay figurines, among other exhibits.

Across five sections, “Inheriting the Gesture” considers craft as knowledge embodied in practice, while “Material Fictions” highlights how artisans move beyond making utilitarian objects to create visual narratives. “Imagined Territories” explores works in which the land becomes a symbolic language and landscapes, agriculture and collective memory become elements in visual narratives with emotional and conceptual dimensions.

The exhibition’s fourth section, “Wearing Identity,” examines the reinterpretation of textile practices, fashion and traditional clothing. Its final section, “Inhabiting Ancestral Futures,” highlights how inherited knowledge is used to create new functions and forms.

Source: QNA

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