The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London is the latest European institution to turn the spotlight on Iran. The museum has a major exhibition focusing on Iranian heritage and history in the pipeline.
“The V&A is in the early stages of planning an exhibition that will showcase an important private collection of Iranian art supplemented by the V&A’s own holdings,” a museum spokeswoman says. No opening date has been set.
Museums in the West continue to woo Iranian cultural bodies after last year’s deal on Iran’s nuclear programme and the lifting of sanctions imposed on the country by the United Nations.
Martin Roth, the director of the V&A, told The Art Newspaper last year: “Let’s start slowly and see the establishment of diplomatic networks, so there’s something to support co-operation. Iranians are super-smart and they know when the time is right.”
Little-seen treasures Meanwhile, Berlin will become the first foreign city to host the collection of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMOCA) in an exhibition scheduled to open in December (until February 2017). The collection includes works by Picasso, Rothko, Kandinsky, Pollock, Warhol and Bacon acquired before the Iranian Revolution in 1978-79, as well as work by Iranian artists.
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation announced on 12 May that it had signed a contract with the Tehran museum. The German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier welcomed the accord as “a signal of a new cultural and social openness that we want to use to broaden our dialogue with Iranian society—on controversial subjects too”.
The little-seen collection is considered one of the best holdings of Western art outside the US and Europe. After the Shah and his wife fled the country during the revolution, the museum hid its treasures in a basement vault. They were returned to public view 20 years later in 1999, but most of the works have not travelled outside the country. “Berlin is about to experience an art sensation,” says Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.
Berlin’s cultural leaders have yet to determine which museum will host the show. The Art Newspaper has previously reported that Germany was negotiating a loan fee of as much as $3m to display the collection.
