With Qatar opening the spectacular National Museum in a glittering ceremony on Wednesday, the world media are unanimous in the praise of the great cultural showpiece that resembles a desert rose.

In its report titled ‘The new National Museum of Qatar is a desert rose of mutant scale’, the Financial Time said, “The National Museum of Qatar — a blown-up model of a desert rose – is made of sandy-coloured gypsum discs the size of flying saucers. It resembles a colossal crystal sitting between the sea, the corniche, the multi-lane highways and the centre of Doha — like something that has formed from a mutated geology to compete with the scale of the skyscrapers.”

“The desert rose, something which nature throws together with insouciance and leaves in the desert for no one to see, is a spectacle to create a symbol for a nation,” it said.

The Guardian, in its article, too sang praise of the cultural edifice. 

In its article titled, The flying saucers have landed: Qatar’s thrilling new supersized museum, The Guardian said, “Hundreds of huge white plates lie scattered along the roadside in the centre of Doha, Qatar, as if someone has had a spectacular accident with a gigantic crockery cupboard. The creamy discs tilt this way and that, colliding with each other in a random muddle along the edge of the highway, forming an otherworldly landscape of canopies, terraces and enigmatic slit windows.”
Similarly, the New York Times, said the museum which tells the story of Qatar, from prehistoric times to the present day, will get most attention for its astonishing architecture.

The new museum was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel on the Doha waterfront Corniche.

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