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.