Qatar is planning an enormous museum of international modern and contemporary art, and will soon have its very own Art Basel fair. It is also now preparing to build the Gulf region’s largest full-service storage and logistics facility for fine art.
To create the new facility, QC+, a strategic partner with Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) and Art Basel in presenting the upcoming Art Basel Qatar, has teamed up with the logistics and supply chain provider, Gulf Warehousing Company Q.P.S.C (GWC). The facility will provide art preservation, storage, conservation, and viewing rooms.
Its location will be close to Hamad International Airport, in a designated free zone, which means artworks can be stored and traded while legally remaining outside the country’s customs territory. Other such freeports exist in Geneva, Luxembourg, Singapore, and the state of Delaware in the US. (Qatar has two primary free zones for other industries: the Ras Bufontas Free Zone (Airport Free Zone and the Umm Alhoul Free Zone (Seaport Free Zone).)
In a statement, Kirstin Mearns, CEO of QC+, tied the development directly to Art Basel, pointing to the fair and the new facility as signs of a mature art market. “The Gulf is no longer an emerging market for art,” she said. “It is a global player, as demonstrated by the announcement of Art Basel Qatar.” In a separate statement, Matthew Kearns, acting group CEO of GWC, said that the “project represents a new benchmark for integrated art infrastructure and creative economy growth in the region.”
Full service storage facilities often accompany a region’s growing art market. South Korea announced plans for one in 2023, one year after the launch of Frieze Seoul. The Doha facility is meant to service the wider Gulf region, which does not yet have one of any scale. In her recent article for ARTnews on the state of the art market in the region, Melissa Gronlund reported that Dubai is in talks to build a freeport, and that the Saudi gallery ATHR this past May opened a high-spec art storage depot, built in partnership with the German logistics company Hasenkamp.
