Aerial shot of The Lawh Wa Qalam: M. F. Husain Museum, 2025. Image Courtesy of Qatar Foundation
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https://www.archdaily.com/1036088/qatar-foundation-launches-new-m-f-husain-museum-in-dohas-education-city
On November 28, 2025, Qatar Foundation will launch Lawh Wa Qalam: M. F. Husain Museum, a new addition to Qatar’s cultural landscape dedicated to the life and work of artist Maqbool Fida Husain. The museum will be the world’s first institution to trace Husain’s artistic journey from the 1950s to his death in 2011, offering an immersive experience in a building drafted by the artist himself. The permanent exhibition will include paintings, films, tapestry, photography, poetry, and installations, presented through multimedia storytelling. Covering more than 3,000 square meters, the museum aims to foster creativity and dialogue, serving as a new space for learning and exploration within Qatar Foundation’s Education City in Doha. The initiative adds to a campus that houses educational and research institutions designed by architects such as Arata Isozaki, Rem Koolhaas, and Antoine Predock, as well as firms like Legorreta + Legorreta and Mangera Yvars Architects.
Qatar Foundation’s Education City occupies a 12 km² campus deliberately conceived as a dense, mixed-use urban environment integrating education, research, recreation, and heritage. The master plan brings together international branch campuses, a home-grown university, start-ups, cultural institutions, and sports facilities. Landmark structures by internationally recognized architects anchor the site, while public spaces incorporate green areas and sports infrastructure, including a stadium, organized around pedestrian networks and a tram system. In keeping with its contextual grounding, Education City also preserves historic Qatari heritage sites, integrating early-20th-century structures into its contemporary landscape.
Render of Lawh Wa Qalam: M. F. Husain Museum, 2025. Image Courtesy of Qatar Foundation
Sketch by Maqbool Fida Husain, 2008. Image Courtesy of Qatar Foundation
The design of Lawh Wa Qalam: M. F. Husain Museum is intended to offer an immersive art experience, inviting campus visitors to step into Husain’s world and explore the influences, philosophies, and memories that shaped his practice. Seeroo fi al ardh, Husain’s final major work, an installation conceived in 2009 that depicts humanity’s progress, will be incorporated into the museum as a dedicated gallery, where visitors can experience the piece through a specially curated presentation. The architectural concept mirrors a sketch by Husain, who envisioned the building as an artwork in itself, reflecting his lifelong experimentation across disciplines.
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Maqbool Fida Husain, known as M. F. Husain, was an Indian-born modern artist whose paintings are often associated with Cubism. A founding member of the Progressive Artists’ Group formed in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1947, he is considered closely connected to the cultural and social transitions of his time. According to the Qatar Foundation, Husain played a leading role in reshaping modern art in India by moving beyond academic painting and miniaturist traditions. His life spanned major global and regional events, from two World Wars and the Partition of the British Raj to the Cold War and conflicts in South and West Asia, and his work engaged with postcolonial experiences, rural cultures, diverse religious narratives, and South and Southwest Asian mythologies. His artistic practice extended across oil and watercolor painting, lithography, serigraphy, sculpture, architecture, and installation, and he was also a filmmaker, poet, and memoirist who wrote in Urdu, Hindi, and English. Known for calling himself a “global nomad,” Husain ultimately settled in Qatar toward the end of his life.
Lawh Wa Qalam: M. F. Husain Museum, 2025. Image Courtesy of Qatar Foundation
This month has seen a notable number of new exhibitions and cultural institutions linked to architecture, art, and design. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art announced it will open to the public on September 22, 2026, adding a new institution to Los Angeles’s Exposition Park. In Ghana, the Limbo Museum opened its first public exhibition on October 31 in a formerly abandoned Brutalist estate that reinterprets the idea of the ruin. In Harlem, New York, the Studio Museum, designed by Adjaye Associates in collaboration with Cooper Robertson, opened on November 15 as a new facility dedicated to artists of African descent. Also in the United States, the first Ismaili Center opened in Houston, designed by Farshid Moussavi Architecture and Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, integrating spaces for worship, gathering, and reflection for both the Ismaili community and the wider public.