At Paris's Hôtel de la Marine, the Al Thani Collection's ancient bestiary

The Al Thani Collection, assembled by Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani of Qatar's royal family, has emerged over the past decade as one of the world's most ambitious private holdings of ancient and non-Western art. Permanently housed at the Hôtel de la Marine on Place de la Concorde, it regularly stages thematic exhibitions open to the public, engaging directly with the historic building's architecture, once the seat of the French royal furniture repository and later the Navy ministry.

This fifth Parisian exhibition, opening at the Hôtel de la Marine, brings together 120 objects centered on the animal kingdom and the relationships humans have forged with it since antiquity. Jewelry, sculpture, metalwork and ritual objects from a wide range of cultures are juxtaposed in unexpected pairings rather than arranged by conventional chronology or geography. The design, described as evoking an "Ali Baba's cave," leans into density and abundance to recreate the sense of wonder these animal forms have long inspired.

The approach follows the pattern established by previous Al Thani exhibitions, which favor formal and symbolic echoes between objects from distant origins and eras over academic categorization. The animal kingdom, a recurring presence in art since prehistory, offers especially fertile ground for such dialogue: from the Egyptian lion to the East Asian dragon and the bestiaries of medieval Europe, animal motifs have carried consistent religious, political and symbolic weight across civilizations.

The show fits into the summer programming of Paris institutions and underscores the collection's now-established place in the capital's museum landscape, where it has occupied dedicated galleries within the Hôtel de la Marine since the building's restoration and reopening to the public in 2021 under the Centre des monuments nationaux.

---

Written by the ADM desk based on Connaissance des Arts. Read the original article for the full story.