Symposium mulls precious motifs of islamic art

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and architecture critic for The New Yorker, Paul Goldberger, delivered the keynote address which focused on the museum itself as work of Islamic architecture in his talk titled, ''Islamic Architecture, Modernism, and I.M. Pei: The Challenge of the Museum of Islamic Art.'' He talked about how the building was a symbol of modernist architecture that intertwined the traditional and modern elements and was putting Qatar on the global map. In an hour-long lecture, Goldberger took the audience through Chinese American architect I.M Pei''s career, and the museums in particular. These included earlier works of Pei like the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, the John F. Kennedy Library in Massachusetts, the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa, the Johnson Museum at Cornell University and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art. Goldberger went on to elaborate how buildings like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio sowed the seeds for the kind of work Pei would eventually do while designing the Museum of Islamic Art – most prominently it being set on the water’s edge, away from the city and isolated from other buildings, but with a view of the city skyline. He talked about Pei''s more controversial Pyramid entrance in the Louvre courtyard and how Pie worked on three monumental structures while in retirement - the Miho Museum in Kyoto, Japan, the Suzhou Museum near his childhood home in China, which influenced a lot of the work he did on his final masterpiece, the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. Goldberger mentioned all the research Pie had done although he had never worked in the Middle East and that while the Museum may not have been influenced by Islamic architecture, it did focus on Pie''s trademark elements, the circle, the triangle and the square, walls and spaces, which were also found in Islamic architecture, and the Museum was a perfect example of a monument bringing the modern world to Islamic culture and the other way round. "This building (the MIA) is the capstone of Pei''s lifelong quest," concluded Goldberger.