The Empress and I: How an Ancient Empire Collected, Rejected, and Rediscovered Modern Art, by Donna Stein, 78, details her time working for Iran s Farah Pahlavi.
The story of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA) has been irresistible to journalists for four decades, laden as it is with period glamour, political intrigue and eye-catching art. To briefly recap: in the mid-1970s, the third wife of the Shah of Iran, Shahbanu Farah Pahlavi, was patron of a crash museum-building programme.
Surging oil prices had made Iran’s ruling classes rich, and Western economies, and therefore the art market, weak. In October 1977, TMoCA opened for Pahlavi’s birthday with a hastily but deftly assembled collection of Modern masterpieces from Gauguin to Giacometti, Picasso to Pollock. But scarcely a year after its glamorous opening, the Iranian Revolution toppled the Pahlavi dynasty. The museum and its collection went into deep storage but remarkably survived almost intact.
Donna Stein s
The Empress and I: How an Ancient Empire Collected, Rejected, and Rediscovered Modern Art (2021). Courtesy of Skira.
The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA) has for decades been a beacon for the Iranian people. During the 1979 Islamic Revolution, a human shield formed around the building to protect the art inside. In 2016, when plans to privatize the museum were made public, protests filled the street.
After two years of renovations, TMoCA which houses the most valuable collection of Modern Western art outside Europe and North America swung open its doors again on January 28. But that’s not the only reason the museum is back in the limelight.