[1] In 2010, the museum opened its doors in the Qatar Foundation's Education City in the Doha Metropolitan Area in a former school building transformed by the French architect Jean-François Bodin.

[8] Artist and former staff member Sophia Al-Maria recounts the early intentions of Sheikh Hassan and the founding team as shaping the institution to be a "twenty-first century 'post-museum'...a fledgling term for transparent, interaction-oriented museum models.

[10] In 2013, Mathaf launched the Encyclopedia of Modern Art and the Arab World, a resource offering detailed biographies that have been researched by scholars and independent historians as well as essays, videos, and interviews.

[11] In March 2020, the museum closed to the public because of the COVID-19 pandemic, with parts of the collections still being accessible online through a partnership with the Google Arts & Culture platform.

[22][23][24] The 5,500-square-meter (59,000-square-foot) museum, located in a former school building in Doha's Education City, has a collection of more than 9,000 artworks,[25] as communicated in 2014, that offers a rare comprehensive overview of modern Arab art, representing the major trends spanning from the 1840s to the present.

The permanent collection includes works by Etel Adnan, Yousef Ahmad, Manal AlDowayan, Farid Belkahia, Kamal Boullata, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Jilali Gharbaoui, Shirin Neshat, Shakir Hassan Al Said, Wael Shawky, and Chaibia Talal.

[32] Simultaneously, the museum hosted Interventions (an exhibition of new commissions by five pivotal modernist Arab artists (Dia Azzawi, Farid Belkahia, Ahmed Nawar, Ibrahim el-Salahi and Hassan Sharif) and Told/Untold/Retold, an ambitious exhibition of new commissions by twenty-three contemporary Arab artists.

[35] Saraab ("mirage") re-imagined historical relations between China and the Persian Gulf region and reaffirmed Mathaf's commitment to presenting a unique Arab perspective on modern and contemporary art.

[49] As part of the 2024 Years of Culture initiative, some permanent galleries were updated to highlight Moroccan artist such as Chaibia Talal or Mohamed Melehi.

[97] The Encyclopaedia of Modernity and the Arab World is published by Mathaf Curatorial and Research department, as a peer reviewed platform linking the museum to University.