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.
Iran s secret billion-dollar art collection
How did the most valuable collection of modern western art outside Europe and the US end up in Tehran?
5 April 2021 • 5:00am
The Tehran Museum Of Contemporary Art
Credit: Alamy
People ask me, ‘What do you think of when you think of Iran?’” says Farah Pahlavi, the 82-year-old widow of the country’s last Shah, speaking to me via Zoom from her wood-panelled Parisian home. “I think of the mountains. Especially Damavand, the volcano, which I could see from the palace. And I think of the streams, the trees, ordinary people…” She sighs. “Of course, I miss my country, the country that I knew. But I keep hope that Iran will rise from her ashes.”