How The MF Husain Museum Is A Vibrant Blue Ode To Artistry

In late November 2025, the Lawh Wa Qalam: MF Husain Museum in Doha, Qatar, opened its doors, with a striking blue mosaic-tiled museum designed by Indian architect Martand Khosla. The first museum dedicated to the artworks of Maqbool Fida Husain, one of the most influential and controversial Indian modernist artists of the 20th century, the museum’s architecture was based on a rough sketch of a blue house created by the artist, now expanded out into a full structure.

Launched by non-profit Qatar Foundation, the museum displays about 150 works and objects—paintings, sculpture, films, tapestries, photography, poetry, and installations—alongside ephemera related to the artist across 3,000 square meters.

Celebrating Maqbool Fida Husain’s Modernist Legacy

Featuring a blue and grey structure that combines open-plan spaces with quieter inward-looking areas, the design draws both from Husain’s visual vocabulary and from the larger Modernist movement of the Indian subcontinent, of which he was a key figure.

Khosla says Husain’s sketch served as a conceptual starting point, rather than an architectural plan, allowing him to add his own interpretation into the design.

“The design of the museum developed as a series of explorations around form, material and the role of the building within its larger urban context. Rather than imagining the museum as a single object, it was conceived as a composition of shifting volumes that come together to form a larger whole,” Kholsa tells Interior Design. “While the sketch indicated a façade and hinted at massing, it did not address the realities of site, scale, circulation or program. These were aspects that architecture had to resolve.

“What was added through the architectural process was a response to context and use. The museum’s location within Education City required it to function not only as a container for Husain’s works but also as a space for learning, discourse and engagement,” he adds. “The building evolved to accommodate a more complex program, including galleries, a research library and spaces for events, while still acknowledging the modernist sensibility embedded in Husain’s thinking.

Acknowledging Modernist Sensibility

“The massing borrowed heavily from South Asian informal urbanism, where volumes shift to accommodate site and life realities. This design approach was acknowledging the life and urban experiences of Husain through his early life and his love of wandering through the streets of India.”

The resulting museum sits on a raised platform, almost like a stage—placing the museum as a space for exchange and discourse, not merely viewing art—with a tall white cylindrical volume on one side. The visuals echo the language of Husein’s monumental Seeroo Fi Al-Ardh art installation next door, linking the museum visually and conceptually with Husain’s final commission.

Inside The Lawh Wa Qalam: MF Husain Museum