Museum Devoted to Indian Modernist M. F. Husain Set to Open in Doha
70Oct. 2, 2025
TheQatar Foundationhas revealed that it will inaugurate a new institution dedicated to the life and work of influential Indian modernistMaqbool Fida Husainin Doha’s Education City later this fall.Lawh Wa Qalam: M. F. Husain Museumwill open to the public on November 28. Housing a collection encompassing six decades of Husain’s practice, including paintings, films, tapestries, photographs, poetry, and installations, the museum will be the world’s first and largest devoted to the artist’s work.
Comprising roughly 32,300 square feet, the new institution—whose name translates to “The Canvas and the Pen”—was designed by Delhi-based architect Martand Khosla based on a 2008 sketch by Husain. Among the exhibited works will be a cycle of paintings inspired by Arab civilization and commissioned by Qatar Foundation chair Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, as well asSeeroo fi al Ardh, 2009, a multimedia installation portraying humanity’s technological and cultural progress. That work, one of the artist’s last before his death in 2011, will be presented in its own gallery.
Variously reported to have been born in 1913 and 1915, Husain first gained renown as a founding member of the Progressive Artists Group, which he established alongside fellow artists F. N. Souza and S. H. Raza in 1947, in what is now Mumbai. Breaking with academic tradition, the group forged a modern Indian visual style. Husain examined themes including myth and religion, as well as rural and postcolonial society. Lauded at home and around the world, he fled his native country for London and Dubai in 2006, after more than a decade spent firing Hindu wrath with his paintings of nude Hindu goddesses, the final straw being his depiction of India as a naked female deity. He spent his twilight years in Qatar, which offered him citizenship in 2010.