VCU School of the Arts to Present Tasmeem Doha at its Qatar Campus, VCUQatar

By Carrie Culpepper
Mutual Admiration Society

The eighth biennial international art and design conference, Tasmeem Doha, will be held March 10-17 as part of the 15^th anniversary of VCUQatar, the Qatar campus of the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of the Arts. The conference will bring together leading scholars and artists—including VCU School of the Arts faculty Corin Hewitt and Hope Ginsburg; conference co-chairs and VCUQatar faculty Thomas Modeen, Johan Granberg and Peter Martin; and artists Jeff Turko, Roger Kemp, Constantin Boym and Alex Schweder La, among others—to work with students from VCU’s Qatar and Richmond campuses. Unlike traditional conferences, this year’s Tasmeem Doha will be structured as a series of ongoing activities, collaborative workshops, lab sessions and exhibitions. Rem Koolhaas will deliver the conference’s keynote address.

A major component of the conference will be the exploration of the role art and design is playing in the transformation of Doha, Qatar from a small pearl fishing community to a preeminent center for the arts, popular tourism destination and home to more than 1.7 million—all in just a few decades. The conference’s theme of “hybrid making” will explore hybridity within the acts of making, building and sustaining a contemporary society, engaging with art, design and other interventions that have been conceived, designed or fabricated in Qatar. Tasmeem Doha will include a series of exhibitions by regional art and design galleries, keynote presentations by artists, designers and architects who have realized projects in the country, and a series of workshops and labs for students led by VCU School of the Arts professors and other artists. A primary goal of these working sessions is to design projects that explore and fulfill civic needs in Qatar and may eventually be adapted to serve the community.

“The collaboration between VCUarts and VCUQatar is an invaluable aspect of our work and Tasmeem Doha is a perfect example of the kind of exchange so vital to the education of our students,” noted Joseph H. Seipel, dean of the VCU School of the Arts. “As we celebrate 15 years in Doha, we could not be more proud of the depth of commitment we’ve seen from our students and faculty to this great city and region, and the role they continue to play in the fabric of its society.”

VCU was the first American university to establish a campus in the country, in 1998 in Qatar’s Education City. Under the leadership of dean Allyson Vanstone, VCUQatar has become a cornerstone of the Qatari art and design scene and an important resource for the larger community. Focused on developing Qatar’s next generation of designers and scholars to contribute to the region’s social, economic and environmental development, VCUQatar students have been engaged by local institutions and government agencies on a variety of projects—including design for Qatar military uniforms, the logo for Doha’s 2016 Olympic bid campaign and housing for temporary workers that can be adapted to site-specific conditions. VCUQatar also offers a series of community art and design classes for children, teenagers and adults in both Arabic and English. More than 40 nationalities are represented within VCUQatar’s student body, including young Qatari men and women.

VCUQatar offers Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in fashion design, graphic design, interior design and painting and printmaking; a Master of Fine Arts degree in design studies; and a bachelor’s degree in art history—the first art history program within the country, intended to train Qatari students for positions within the country’s burgeoning visual arts community. Since VCU’s arrival in Qatar, the university has been joined by some of the globe’s leading higher education institutions—including Weill Cornell Medical College, Texas A&M University, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Carnegie-Mellon University, Northwestern University, HEC Paris and University College London.

VCU School of the Arts in Richmond, Va. has long been the top public university arts and design program in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report. Known for its cross-disciplinary approach as part of a major research university, VCU School of the Arts recently unveiled the design for a new Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) on its Richmond campus by Steven Holl Architects. Part exhibition and performance space, part lab and incubator, the 38,000-square-foot building will feature a series of flexible programming spaces for the presentation of visual art, theater, music, dance and film by national and internationally recognized artists. Currently anticipated to open in 2015, the non-collecting institution is designed to facilitate the way artists are working today by accommodating the increasing lack of barriers among different media and practices.  

VCU, the parent university to the School of the Arts, is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located on two downtown campuses in Richmond and a satellite campus in Qatar, VCU enrolls more than 31,000 students in 216 certificate and degree programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Its campus in Qatar provides students and faculty with a direct tie to the Middle East, a region of increasing significance in the contemporary art world.

For more information on VCU School of the Arts, please visit: arts.vcu.edu
For more information on the ICA, please visit: ica.vcu.edu