A concrete gesture to support the arts in Palestine

We talk to Omar Al-Qattan of A M Qattan Foundation about why its cultural centre is so important

The new 7,700 sq metre A M Qattan Foundation Cultural Centre will host four exhibitions a year

This summer, the AM Qattan Foundation Cultural Centre opened atop a rocky hilltop overlooking Ramallah: a squat cube, covered by dark, grey latticework. “It’s quite a unique building,” allows Omar Al-Qattan, the chair of the AM Qattan Foundation, which built the centre as its headquarters and public exhibition site. “It will offer a symbolic reference point: a high-quality building that can be referred to for anyone who’s embarking on a public project.”

The Cultural Centre follows the Palestinian Museum, which opened in 2016 on another Ramallah hilltop. While its sandy-coloured cladding echoes the rocks around it, as if it is trying to blend into its surroundings, the Qattan Cultural Centre aims to stand out.

So does the family-run AM Qattan Foundation, which turns twenty this year. It was founded in 1993 by a Palestinian couple, Abdel Mohsin Al-Qattan and Leila Darwish Miqdadi, the daughter of Darwish Miqdadi, a Palestinian who helped set up the educational system in Kuwait. (Another daughter of Miqdadi is the NYUAD professor Salwa Mikdadi, who has done much herself to document and support Arab art history.) Al-Qattan made a fortune in the construction business, and after the Oslo Accords allowed the pair to visit Palestine, they set up the foundation, though it did not begin undertaking projects in earnest for a few years. Mohsin’s son, Omar, joined in 2005, leaving behind his career as a filmmaker to revive a construction portfolio in Kuwait that had been left, he says, “pretty much moribund” after the first Gulf War and the drop in oil prices in the 1990s. His father died in 2017 and remained involved in the foundation till the end.

With the new headquarters they are giving public visibility to the many education and cultural projects they have supported in Palestine: an early education centre in Gaza; the Mosaic Rooms, which show Arab art, in London; as well as a host of projects in Ramallah, from the Qalandiya International to grant schemes for artists to their Young Artist of the Year Award, popularly known by its initials, or YAYA. But part of the importance of the Foundation has been the Foundation itself. 

“Over the last 20 years there’s no question that the existence of a stable and transparent and very public institution like ours has helped the sector,” Al-Qattan says. “When we started, people would laugh about the priorities we had set. Who wanted to work in culture when there were other needs, like hospitals and roads and so on? Across the Arab world this was the case, and I’m very happy that so many other countries and indeed some families have emulated our example.”

Cultural funding has consolidated over the past quarter century in the Arab world into various arts organisations, from family foundations such as the Kamel Lazaar Foundation to larger umbrella organisations such as the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, which take funding from international foundations and individual donors.

“In all modesty, the three sectors we work in have had a huge push from the existence of an independent national institution like ours,” he continues. “That’s had a huge impact psychologically. People trusted us like they wouldn’t have trusted a non-Palestinian organisation. But they only really trusted us once we started working and they saw the seriousness and the transparency and the efficiency with which we were able to work in our various projects – and also because we were there for the long term.”

In Palestine, the symbolic nature of the building is undeniable. The city itself is an amalgam of light concrete buildings, with black water tanks that perch on the roofs like hungry beetles. Roads have been built with little urban planning; empty, trash-ridden lots abut new developments, and a feeling of temporariness abounds. The interim nature of life in the Palestinian capital isn’t just architectural; the Oslo Accords set out a plan for the Palestinian state, but negotiations have stalled, and the Palestinian Authority is captured in the early stages. Life is in a holding pattern.

In this light, the longevity suggested by museums – those repositories of the past on behalf of the future – is felt even more keenly. Fida Touma, deputy director general of the Foundation, stresses the importance of having a public presence.

“First, it’s to offer the space, as a space,” she says. “It’s not just the programmes.” She continues: “For the past 20 years we’ve been very active in childhood education, mostly in Gaza. And in culture we’ve been supporting artists through grant-making mechanisms, along with awards. All this work needed to be presented to a wider public. And for us too to take the experience of what we support the public and to morph it into our experience as well.”

In addition to its galleries, the centre will also offer the kind of spaces that nurture cultural production: art studios, classrooms, and a library, as well as a restaurant. At 7700 square meters, it’s “huge – enormous!” gushes Touma. (Indeed, many media reports do not fail to note that it is twice as large as the Palestinian Museum, which has already gained a reputation as a difficult space to curate exhibitions in.)

The space opened in June with “Subcontracted Nations,” a group exhibition put together by the curator of public programmes, Yazid Anani. Going forward, it will aim to have four exhibitions annually. Later this year, it will host the 10th anniversary of YAYA, for which past winners can apply for the opportunity to exhibit current work.  

The space has been many years in the making; it was meant to open in 2016, but postponed due to conflicts that year. Other delays were due to the mundane problems of building in Palestine, where all legal and logistical structures are controlled by Israel. The Foundation reported staffing problems, as construction workers could receive much higher salaries in Israel. Shipments of material were often delayed; the library shelves were reported to be detained for three months with no reason given. If the Israeli strategy is death by a thousand cuts, this has been countered by the persistence and solidity of the new Centre.

“My late father’s hope was that he would set an example for other Palestinian families to do the same, and they have, perhaps not on the same scale,” says Al-Qattan, “But a study of Palestinian philanthropy would show over the past 20 years giving and supporting Palestinian culture has now become possible.”  

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Read more

‘Solidarity’ and what it means in Palestine’s art scene

Cairo collection lands in the Mosaic Rooms on the banks of the Thames

Art under occupation: The challenges facing Palestinian artists and cultural institutions

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