I’ve long held a fascination with the Tehran Museum of Art’s modern and contemporary collection, largely unseen since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. I can’t remember exactly when or where, but I saw a TV program years and years ago that delved into the art storage vault where the collection is kept, and I’ve been sort of obsessed with the collection which hangs from a series of metal grates on wheels that make for compact vertical storage, unseen by anyone. That TV program was where I first saw one of Warhol’s big Marilyn silkscreens, only adding to my long puzzlement and curiosity about contemporary Iranian culture – something that has always seemed somehow self-contradictory to me.
Kim Murphy’s LA Times story is a brief, but rewarding explanation of just what the collection has been doing – that it was briefly on view in 2005, that a third of it was added following the revolution as private collectors works filtered in, looking for a post-revolution home, that its future is uncertain…