First Look at Doha’s Museum for Self-Exiled Indian Artist M. F. Husain

SceneTraveller stepped inside 'Lawh Wa Qalm'—Doha’s new Maqbool Fida Husain Museum by Qatar Foundation—before its official opening on November 28th, 2025, and discovered a space that reframes the exiled Indian painter’s legacy through the works he created in Qatar. Born in India, Husain is one of the country’s most celebrated—and perhaps controversial—contemporary painters. His paintings of nude Hindu goddesses embroiled his work in controversy in the 90s, pushing him to leave India in 2006 in self-imposed exile. Husain arrived in Qatar at the end of 2007, where Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser commissioned Husain to paint a series based on Arab civilization, for which he completed 35 paintings, as well as his multi-media masterpiece 'Seeroo fi al Ardh.' Nouf Mohammed, the museum’s curator, shared with SceneTraveller that their priority was displaying the works that Husain completed in Qatar, works that have never been seen before.  Mohammed had the difficult task of choosing just 150 works from the 40,000 that Husain completed in his lifetime—across canvases, film, photography, calligraphy, and even billboards. As you walk through each of the museum’s three exhibits, you are immersed in Husain’s world—inside a blue building that museum architect Martand Khosla brought to life based on one of Husain's sketches.  “It was as if I was having a conversation with him beyond death,” Khosla tells SceneTraveller. “He left all of these clues behind in the drawing about who he was and how he thought.” Husain received Qatari citizenship in 2010, and died the following year at 95. Today, his story finds a permanent home in Lawh Wa Qalm—the region's first museum dedicated to a single modern artist.