RIYADH: People have been anxious to see what Asaan, the Misk Heritage Museum, will showcase after Princess Sara bint Mashour announced its construction in February this year.
On the sidelines of the Misk Global Forum 2025 on Wednesday, Arab News got a sneak peek into the museum’s architecture and design, and the interactive role that the Kingdom’s youngsters are expected to play in it once the doors open.
Asaan’s CEO Khaled Al-Saqer said the museum will host five permanent exhibitions and two temporary ones, and added: “We are making very good progress to showcase our Saudi heritage collection, dating back hundreds of years.”
The building itself is being designed in collaboration with Zaha Hadid Architects and will showcase traditional Najdi-style architecture.
The museum plans to display artwork from a mix of different styles, spotlighting the diversity of Saudi heritage, Al-Saqer added.
He said: “The second part of our mission is that we don’t want to have a museum that is centered around the collection because we want it to be centered around the community.
“We don’t want closed walls … we want to engage with our community, our audience.”
Asaan will have capacity-building programs in two streams: short-term programs such as training and development workshops, and long-term programs to support the creative, artistic and cultural industries in the Kingdom.
Considering the newly developing art and entertainment scene in Saudi, Al-Saqer wants to “build our local capacity here” through long-term programs for the younger generations to join and manage, while operating and developing the exhibition and other related programs.
He said this was “so we can build on each others’ efforts and build on our cumulative experience moving forward to achieve our goals.”
He added: “We are targeting youth. That’s the first mission for us.”
The project, he added, is building a bridge between historic roots and the younger generation, as well as future generations.
Considering the rapid speed of globalization, Al-Saqer emphasized the need to keep Saudi Arabia’s youth connected to and proud of their heritage.
And rather than running away from advancing technologies, Asaan is leaning into the new age of digitalization.
Al-Saqer added: “We are capitalizing on the technology to drive more value and connect with our heritage. We are saying we are inviting youth to co-create the future of heritage (preservation), moving forward, that will be built on technology, AI, and digital tools, because we cannot work in isolation.”
Saudi Arabia’s young population and high digital consumption rates provide a positive advantage to maximizing the value of Asaan, Al-Saqer said.
Having the old and the new work in harmony rather than thinking of them as separately existing entities is what makes Asaan — a new vehicle entering the cultural scene in Saudi — uniquely complementary to the existing ecosystem, he added.
