ICOM Qatar at ICOM Dubai
Arts, Culture, and Creativity
2025
The ICOM General Conference happens every three years. In November 2025 it came to the Middle East for the first time in its history. For Qatar's national committee, the question was straightforward: with the global museum profession arriving on the region's doorstep, what should Qatar say about itself—and how?
Client:
ICOM Qatar
Qatar Museums
Media Majlis Museum
Services:
Concept, Strategy, Content Development, Art Direction
Credits:
Jack Thomas Taylor with fortytwelve (stand design) and Dutch Design Agency (graphic design)
Image credits:
Supplied
The 27th ICOM General Conference, held in Dubai in November 2025 under the theme The Future of Museums in Rapidly Changing Communities, brought together museum professionals from across the world. Held alongside it, the Museum Fair served as the conference’s hub for institutions, partners and innovators shaping the sector. As a founding board member of ICOM Qatar, Jack Thomas Taylor developed the committee’s participation concept for both the conference and the Fair.
The concept centred on a simple, defensible claim: in Qatar, there is a museum for everyone. From national collections to specialist subject areas, from house museums to academic university museums, Qatar’s museums have developed to the point where every interest, knowledge level and access requirement has a place to go. The participation strategy presented that whole picture to an international professional audience—not a single institution’s brochure, but a country’s museum offer, made legible in one stand.
Jack Thomas Taylor developed the exhibition stand concept, the key messages, and the content direction, including a film showcasing Qatar’s museums produced for the conference and closing on the central line. The work aligned the committee’s presence with the conference theme, positioning Qatar’s museums as a live answer to the question of what museums become in rapidly changing communities—rather than a case study waiting to be written about by someone else.
The participation placed ICOM Qatar in direct contact with the institutions and professionals shaping regional and global practice, at the first General Conference the region has ever hosted. Being present at that table, at that moment, was the point.