Doha - The Cultural Dubai (Times Newspaper)

Doha: the cultural Dubai
Forget Dubai's bling. One Gulf state hopes that high culture will attract the more discriminating visitor, says John Arlidge

He may be 91 and walk with a cane, but I.M.Pei can still make an entrance. Last weekend the Chinese- American architect behind the Louvre's hyper-modern glass pyramid stepped gently on to a jetty and looked up past the illuminated, operatic obelisks at his latest - and last - creation: the new Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. Museum staff, who had gathered on the citadel-like structure on a reclaimed island in the Persian Gulf, burst into applause.

“I'd never had a chance to build on water before, so I was determined to make the most of it,” he said.

He certainly has. Pei has blended Western architecture with traditional ideas of Islamic design to create a minimalist icon in the razzle-dazzle Gulf and, perhaps, the best new gallery building in the world. Approached by dhow, the vast tiered limestone cubes loom above the visitor, giving the building colossal impact.

But thanks to the detailing, notably the Islamic geometric patterning, the soft grey granite stripes and the traditional Arabic arched windows that catch the changing colours of the sun, the structure is not severe.

Inside, the vast atrium is lit by a 150ft, five-storey glass wall that looks out over the sea, creating a view so bright that you step back - half in shock, half in wonder. By contrast, the soft lighting, louro faya Brazilian lacewood, brushed and polished to look like metal, and the rough grey porphyry stone create a kind of perma-dusk in the galleries that run around the atrium. You feel as if you are entering a series of dimly lit temples.

Standing under the 170ft-high silver dome that tumbles down in a series of geometric shapes - an octagon, a square and finally four triangles - it's hard to disagree with the new museum's director, Oliver Watson, formerly of the V&A in London and Oxford's Ashmolean, that it is “the most spectacular space”.

When the new national symbol of Qatar opens on Monday, the country's rulers hope it will do for Doha what Frank Gehry's swirling, steel-sheathed Guggenheim did for Bilbao: put it on the cultural map.

But why culture? And why now? The Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, is not content to use his nation's oil and gas wealth to invest in Western financial institutions: he wants to diversify into tourism and culture at home. So, like a latter-day Renaissance aristocrat, he has spent the past decade buying up Islamic and modern art at such a clip that he has helped to cause hyper-inflation in the market.

The state-owned works will be housed in the Museum of Islamic Art and four new galleries, including a national museum designed by the French modernist Jean Nouvel. Also on the drawing board are a photography museum, by Santiago Calatrava of Spain, and a national library by the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki.

“This is only a beginning,” Sheikha al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the Emir's daughter who chairs the Qatar Museum Authority, said at the opening of the museum.

If the other museums are half as good as the Museum of Islamic Art, it won't be long before Doha's elegant corniche is as much of a hub for art-lovers as Dubai is for the glitz-'n'- tits brigade. It's not just that the building is so thrillingly original: the galleries have artefacts that are beautiful, engaging and diverse.

Al-Mayassa insists there will be no restriction on works displayed, so that nudes will feature in paintings and sculpture - a remarkable pushing of the boundaries of public taste in a region where some newspapers airbrush women out of photographs, fully clothed or not.

The highlights include a hind-shaped bronze fountainhead from Andalusia, a 10th-century Iraqi astrolabe that probably helped its owner to face towards Mecca and a striking red silk carpet from Samarkand illustrated with a blend of garden and chessboard. And there is gold jewellery decorated with emeralds and rubies, notably a 17th-century jade pendant that the Mogul emperor Shah Jahan, creator of the Taj Mahal, wore to ease his grief over the loss of his wife.

There are yellowing pages from rare, aged copies of the Koran - including the colossal 15th-century Central Asian Koran that was created for the Emperor Timur after a

version small enough to fit in a signet ring failed to impress him. Everyday - but beautifully crafted - items include ceramic bowls decorated with Islamic script, hand-carved furniture, powder boxes, brass door knockers, rulers, hunting horns, mosque lamps, daggers and scabbards, tiles and coffee pots, kettles and even taps.

It may have the word Islamic in the title, but religious art this ain't. Indeed, there are so many secular items that, at times, it feels like a 14th-century department store, a sort of al-Grace Brothers. “Attention shoppers! Get your astrolabes here. Knobs and knockers on the third floor!”

So far, so promising. But the Emir and his advisers worry that luring Westerners will be tough. They know that travellers are reluctant to fly on an airline whose name they cannot pronounce to a city they cannot find on a map, where summer temperatures are unbearable, to look at art about which they know little. With the conflict still raging in neighbouring Iraq, it's hardly a good time to be marketing “Brand Islam”. Could the museum that oil and gas built turn out to be a white elephant?

At the end of last weekend's opening party, I decided to ask I.M.Pei. He adjusted his Mr Magoo glasses, looked up at his epitaph and said, “I'm only an architect, but this building is very special to me. It helped me learn something, not just about building but about culture.” A gallery that can teach a 91-year-old Pritzker Prize-winning architect new tricks? I can't think of a better reason to jump on the next flight to Doha.