Before travelling to Mongolia, the ‘On the Move’ exhibition first launched in Doha as part of the 2022 Qatar-MENASA Year of Culture festivities.

The National Museum of Qatar (NMoQ) has debuted its first travelling exhibition in Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar.

In a post uploaded to Instagram on Tuesday, the NMoQ announced that On the Move — sponsored by the Qatari Foreign Ministry — will run at the National Museum of Mongolia (NMoM) until August 11.

During the exhibition’s inauguration, Sheikh Abdulaziz Al Thani, NMoQ’s director, described On the Move as taking visitors on “a unique historical journey throughout our past.”

“We are proud of presenting this special exhibition outside of Qatar for the first time, celebrating our longstanding ties with Mongolia, and sharing our culture with the world,” the Sheikha added.

Enkhbat Galbadrakh, Sheikh Abdulaziz’s counterpart at the NMoM added that his country’s national museum was “glad” to feature the Qatari-initiated exhibition.

“We are reflecting on the diversity of human civilisation and the pastoralism value of nomadic culture, and this special exhibition gives the Mongolian audience a unique opportunity to feel the value of comparing the culture and history of Qatar and Mongolia,” Galbadrakh said.

Other attendees at the opening event included Tania Al Majid, NMoQ’s deputy director of curatorial affairs, Alexandra Bounia, senior museum specialist at NMoQ and Sunghyun Im, the head of conservation at NMoQ.

From Doha to Ulaanbaatar

On the Move began its travels to Mongolia via Doha.

First launched in 2022 at the NMoQ as part of the Qatar Creates and the Qatar-MENASA Year of Culture 2022 initiatives, it opened to the Qatari community on 26 October 2022 and ran until 14 January 2023.

Qatar Museums described the showcase as an exploration of “nomadic and semi-nomadic histories, cultures and lives in Central Sahara, Qatar and Mongolia.”

More than 400 pieces were on display — from paintings, historical images, oral histories, archival footage and contemporary photography. The artefacts on display hailed from the NMoQ’s collection, as well as from the Lusail Museum, Qatar National Library and Qatar Museums.

International museums, including the NMoM, Paris’ Musée du Quai Branly and Vienna’s Weltmuseum Wein, among other​ institutions, also loaned artefacts from their collections for the exhibition.

The Doha exhibition served as a counterweight against rife Orientalist stereotypes of nomadic and semi-nomadic cultures within Qatar, Mongolia and Central Sahara.

Visitors were probed to interrogate these biases by critically reviewing films such as the British blockbuster ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ as well as other Orientalist productions.

At the exhibit’s launch, Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al Thani, Qatar Museums’s chairperson, said that ‘On the Move’ “provides visitors with a window to our past as we learn from our ancestors’ wisdom to build a brighter future.”

While of her country’s rich nomadic heritage, the Qatari royal added: “We are proud of our Bedouin nomadic culture and here is a moment to experience this.”