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The Founding Director of Mathaf Returns to Doha for Art Basel Qatar’s Second Edition

Having last worked in Doha in 2012, newly appointed artistic director Wassan Al-Khudhairi frames her return as an opportunity to deepen the relationship between the fair and the city.

Earlier this summer, Art Basel named Wassan Al-Khudhairi artistic director of the 2027 edition of Art Basel Qatar, the fair’s second outing in Doha. She succeeds the Egyptian artist Wael Shawky, who put together a well received inaugural edition of the fair earlier this year. Al-Khudhairi served as founding director of Qatar’s Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, overseeing its 2010 opening. She has since served as chief curator at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, co-artistic director of the ninth Gwangju Biennial, and part of the curatorial team for the 2025 Hawaii Triennial. We caught up with her to hear about how Doha has changed since she left, whether a curated fair is still supposed to sell anything and what to eat when you get there.

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Congratulations on the new gig! You lived and worked in Doha from 2007 to 2012. What does the city’s art ecosystem look like to you now versus then?

When I first came to Doha, there was already significant cultural ambition, but many of the institutions and networks that are so visible today were still taking shape. What feels different to me now is the depth and layering of the ecosystem. Institutions have matured, new initiatives have emerged, and artists and audiences have developed alongside them.

There is also now a generation that has grown up with museums and cultural institutions as part of the landscape of the city, and I think that matters. I’m interested not simply in the scale of the growth, but in what that accumulated experience makes possible: the conversations, expectations, relationships and forms of knowledge that build over time.

For me, returning to Qatar in this new capacity is also an opportunity to listen. I have a history here through my time as founding director of Mathaf, but the city has changed, the cultural landscape has changed, and I’m coming back with a different role within that wider ecology. So I don’t want to assume I already know it. Part of the work is understanding Doha as it is now.

Mathaf’s opening shows, “Told Untold Retold” among them, are now treated as a turning point for........

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