Review: Museum of Islamic Art (MIA)

When the I. M. Pei–designed Museum of Islamic Art first opened in 2008, just months before Pei’s 92nd birthday, it was the first major project in Qatar to set architecture-loving hearts aflutter. Now, after an extensive enhancement project, its dramatic interior spaces are looking better than ever. Spanning 1,400 years of history, the museum’s galleries have been reimagined and reinstalled, introducing new visitor trails and child-friendly resources as well as more than 1,000 newly conserved or acquired objects displayed for the first time. There’s also a new gallery exploring the building’s creation story, which charts Pei’s journeys through the Islamic world before he finally settled on the fountain at Cairo’s Ibn Tulun Mosque as his inspiration for the museum.