For a long time now rumors have been circulating that the royal family of Qatar, led by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, has been angling to purchase Christie's, the world's leading auction house. The sheikh acknowledged as much last year, telling the Financial Times that "it depends on the opportunity, if a good one presents itself we will not hesitate." Now the Al-Thanis have seized on a somewhat different opportunity: they have poached Christie's chairman Edward Dolman, a 27-year veteran at the company who last year led the auction house to $5.2 billion in total sales, its best performance ever.

Dolman, the former Christie's CEO who transitioned to the chairmanship last September, handing the chief executive post to Rodale executive Steven Pleshette Murphy, will now join the Qatar Museums Authority's board of trustees and become executive director for the office of board chairperson Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the sheikh's daughter. According to a Christie's spokesperson, there are "no plans" to fill his role at the company.

The move now puts Dolman, 51, in the cockpit of one of the Middle East's most ambitious engines for the arts, an oil-rich emirate that has been pouring money into fostering what the sheikha hopes will be "a cultural renaissance." Last year the Qatar Museums Authority opened the doors at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, a Doha institution founded by the sheik's son Sheik Hassan bin Mohammad bin Ali Al-Thani; in 2008 it unveiled the I.M. Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art; and it is currently building, among other projects, a National Museum of Qatar that starchitect Jean Nouvel has designed as a sweeping complex of futuristic buildings meant to resemble a desert rose. Qatar has been second only to Abu Dhabi — with its $27 billion Saadiyat Island development that will include branches of the Louvre and the Guggenheim — in luring marquee names from the West to revamp its arts infrastructure.

The news marks an enormous — and, odds are, extremely lucrative — shift for Dolman. Born in London, he studied art history at Southampton University before taking a job as a porter at Christie's (not of aristocratic blood, the common avenues to the company's higher posts were not available to him) and working his way up to furniture specialist. In 1999 he was named CEO, replacing Christopher Davidge — the executive who embroiled Christie's in a notorious price-fixing scandal with Sotheby's — and his early years were devoted to navigating the company through the resulting turmoil. A ferocious rugby player, Dolman may represent the last of the old-guard Brits to run the 246-year-old company, which was purchased by French billionaire François Pinault in 1998.

In recent years, Christie's has moved aggressively under Dolman to make a beachhead in the Middle East's growing art economy, holding sales of art from the region in Dubai. This April, an auction of contemporary Middle Eastern art brought in $8 million, setting records for 42 artists.

Dolman is not the first high-profile Western executive to be poached by the Qatar Museums Authority. Previously Peggy Loar, the founding director of the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami and a former director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), was hired to lead the National Museum of Qatar.