New movement has been made on the National Museum of Qatar front, with the appointment of Sheikha Amna bint Abdulaziz bin Jassim Al-Thani as its director.

In a statement, the Qatar Museums Authority said Al-Thani has been tasked with providing “curatorial and managerial leadership,” as well as supervising educational initiatives, special exhibitions and conferences, and public programs.

Al-Thani has served as acting director of the museum since last December, and before that served on the steering committee. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a business degree and obtained her Master’s in sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

No opening date has been set for the under-construction museum, but the building itself, designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, is supposed to be completed by the end of 2014.

Inside the museum

When completed, the National Museum is slated to look like a desert rose that appears to grow out of the ground. It will join Qatar’s growing collection of cultural facilities, including the Museum of Islamic Art, which opened in 2008, and the Arab Museum of Modern Art (Mathaf), which saw a 2010 launch.

Which art pieces would be displayed inside the National Museum has not yet been disclosed, but the statement said the facility will represent the “past, present and future of Qatar.”

Its website states that the heart of the new facility is expected to be the original national museum, which opened in 1975, and was also the former Emiri palace of Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al-Thani.

In October, a QMA spokeswoman told Doha News:

“We’ve assembled all of the pieces for the museum. The museum’s galleries will cover life in Qatar, traditional textiles and jewelery, everyday life (it will feature a large bedouin tent, for example) the modern oil and gas industry, and a focus on the leaders of the nation. It will be a platform for education.”

Thoughts?