DOHA.- Qatar Museums opened What Lingers in the Artist Mind: Experiments and Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group, a major exhibition at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art exploring the history, legacy, and enduring relevance of this pivotal collective. The exhibition will be on view 25 October 2026 through 6 February 2027.

Drawing extensively from Mathaf’s internationally renowned collections, the exhibition will bring together paintings, sculptures, sketches, photographs, archival materials, and original research to illuminate one of the Arab world's defining artistic movements, and the group’s lasting influence on generations of artists in Iraq and across the wider region. Organised into 17 thematic sections spanning the 1940s to the present day, What Lingers in the Artist Mind offers new perspectives on how the movement emerged, evolved, and continues to shape artistic discourse.

Founded in 1951 by artists Jewad Selim and Shakir Hassan Al Said, the Baghdad Modern Art Group sought to develop a distinctly Iraqi artistic language by combining Mesopotamian heritage, Islamic traditions, and international modernist ideas. By presenting archival materials and original research alongside works of art, What Lingers in the Artist Mind invites visitors into the group’s process of historical and artistic discovery, meanwhile revealing how artistic histories are uncovered, reconstructed, and continually reinterpreted.

Zeina Arida, Director of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, said, “What Lingers in the Artist Mind is a fascinating, multifaceted testament to one of the most consequential movements in the history of Arab modernism. Equally significant, this groundbreaking exhibition demonstrates the urgency of the mission of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, where scholarship illuminates the art of our region. We are proud to bring the work and the stories of the Baghdad Modern Art Group to our visitors and are grateful to curator Nada Shabout for her indispensable collaboration.”

Nada Shabout, art historian and the exhibition’s curator, who is the founding president of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art from the Arab World, Iran and Turkiye, and the founding director of the Modern Art Iraq Archive, said, “What Lingers in the Artist Mind invites audiences to look beyond individual artworks and engage with the ideas, conversations, and cultural aspirations that defined the Baghdad Modern Art Group. It reveals a movement that continuously negotiated questions of identity, heritage and modernity, which are issues that remain strikingly relevant today.”

What Lingers in the Artist Mind features works by the Baghdad Modern Art Group’s co-founders as well as a constellation of leading Iraqi visual artists who engaged with the movement and its ideas to address broader themes of memory, belonging, and cultural continuity and how they have been shaped by conflict and displacement, reflecting the fragility of cultural heritage and the role museums play in preserving artistic legacies.

Among the exhibition highlights are works by leading figures of Iraqi modern art, including Jewad Selim, Shakir Hassan Al Said, Mohammed Ghani Hikmat, Naziha Selim, Lorna Selim, Faraj Abbo, Faiq Hassan, Khalid Al Rahal, Kadhim Haidar, and Dia Al Azzawi. Key works on view include Jewad Selim’s Baghdadiat (1956), Children’s Games (1953), and a 1959 preparatory sketch for Baghdad’s landmark Freedom Monument, presented alongside Mohammed Ghani Hikmat’s bronze maquette for the monument.

The exhibition also features Shakir Hassan Al Said’s One Thousand and One Nights series (1955) and The Great Symbol (1999), as well as Naziha Selim’s Woman with a Bird (1975), Lorna Selim’s Iraqi Shanashil (1965), and Faraj Abbo’s Al Mashta (1964). Together, the works trace the artistic experimentation and evolving ideas that shaped the Group and its influence across generations.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Mathaf will convene a symposium on 3 December 2026 in collaboration with VCUarts Qatar, further contextualising the collective and its legacy. The symposium will examine the group’s formation, evolution, members, challenges and aesthetics, as well as its influence on subsequent generations. Reflecting the exhibition’s commitment to critical inquiry and analysis, the event will generate new perspectives on this historic collective and situate it within the broader histories of Iraqi art and global modernism.

Presented as part of the Qatar Creates Fall/Winter 2026–27 season, the exhibition joins a wider programme of exhibitions and events that reflect Qatar's ongoing commitment to cultural exchange, creative dialogue, and global connection.