IN FOCUS
it easier to meet today’ s museum requirements. The difference, then, lies less in the standards themselves than in the means and methods used to meet them. The challenge is to find solutions suited to each institution’ s architectural and heritage context without losing sight of the core objectives of conservation, security, and the care and promotion of collections. The aim is to ensure the same level of scholarly and conservation rigor, with methods adapted to each site’ s realities. That requires regular investment, proper maintenance, staff training, and, above all, ongoing assessment of needs.
III. RELATIONS WITH PRIVATE AND INDEPENDENT INSTITUTIONS
Independent museums such as MACAAL, the Yves Saint Laurent Museum, and MACMA operate alongside the National Foundation of Museums network. How would you describe the relationship between the Foundation and these institutions: complementarity, competition, or structured cooperation? Does the Foundation also seek to build formal ties with these private institutions through loans, joint exhibitions, or shared resources?
I think it is important to move beyond viewing public and private museums as opposites. Morocco’ s museum landscape is now rich enough that each institution can contribute by drawing on its identity, history, and collections. The National Foundation of Museums’ mission is to support the museum sector as a whole and to contribute to its development. Independent institutions also contribute to this momentum. Naturally, there is room for dialogue, complementarity, and cooperation. We have already had the opportunity to work with some of these institutions, and we are fully open to continuing and expanding these exchanges. Depending on the nature of the project, this cooperation can take various forms: the circulation or loan of works, joint exhibitions, the sharing of expertise, professional exchanges, or joint reflection on museum practice. Ultimately, what unites us matters far more: making the museum a living, accessible space open to the world and working together to elevate the profile of Moroccan culture and heritage.
Some museums we visit stay with us long after we have left their doors. The Musée de l’ Orangerie in Paris is one of those museums that stays with you for a lifetime, ever since I first discovered Claude Monet’ s Water Lilies there. My memory of them remains vivid: the warmth and gradations of color, the reflections, and that very particular light create an atmosphere that invites contemplation and carries you beyond the room. What moves me deeply in this work is its power to take us on a journey. We remain in a gallery, before a painting, yet we feel as if we are somewhere else. Monet turns the museum into an almost meditative space, where time seems to slow, allowing each person an intimate encounter with the work. This is also what I constantly strive for in my own idea of the museum: a place that does not merely display works of art but creates an experience, stirs emotion, and offers visitors a space of freedom; a place that can give them a sense of release, leave them with a lasting memory, and sometimes carry them far beyond what they came looking for.
The museum takes us on a journey: We remain in a gallery, before a painting, yet we feel as if we are somewhere else.
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I would like to close by noting that I have fulfilled one of my many dreams: presenting the great masters of Impressionism for the first time in Morocco, and indeed in the Arab world and Africa, giving the Moroccan public the chance to discover artists such as Monet, Manet, Renoir, Van Gogh, and Cézanne. Nor should I forget the exhibition devoted to Picasso, another deeply significant moment, both for the artistic stature of the works and for the emotion they stirred in the public.
Mehdi Qotbi is a Moroccan painter, born in Rabat in 1951, whose work draws on Arabic calligraphy. Trained in Rabat, Toulouse, and Paris, he has led Morocco’ s National Foundation of Museums since 2011.
Museums That Stay With Us
Beyond the museums you oversee, which museums do you keep returning to, anywhere in the world, whether in person or in memory? What do they achieve that you are constantly striving for yourself?
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