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.
It makes no difference if you are reading about the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in the New York Times, the BBC or any other Western media organisation - the subtext is always how surprising it is to find Western art in the East and especially in a widely and vastly alienated country like Iran, writes Dabashi [Wikimedia commons]
Where do priceless works of art belong – where they were created, where they were plundered or where they were eventually sold and museumised? I have had occasions before on these pages to argue why cliche East vs West binaries need to yield to conceptions of art beyond artificial borders – that the very works of art we love and celebrate must be allowed to reimagine our geographies.
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.