Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art



Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, (Persian: موزه هنرهای معاصر تهران), also known as TMoCA, is among the largest art museums in Tehran and Iran. It has collections of more than 3,000 items that include 19th and 20th century's world-class European and American paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures. TMoCA also has one of the greatest collections of Iranian modern and contemporary art.

The museum was inaugurated by Empress Farah Pahlavi (Persian: فرح پهلوی), née Farah Diba (دیبا), in 1977, just two years before the 1979 Revolution. TMoCA is considered to have the most valuable collections of modern Western masterpieces outside Europe and North America.

Background
According to Farah Pahlavi, the former Empress of Iran, the idea for this museum happened when she was in conversation with artist Iran Darroudi during a gallery opening in the 1970s and Darroudi mentioned she wished there was a place to show work more permanently. The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art museum was supposed to be a place to show contemporary and modern Iranian artist alongside other international artists doing similar work.

The museum was designed by Iranian architect and cousin of the queen, Kamran Diba, who employed elements from traditional Persian architecture of Yazd, Kashan and other desert towns. It was built adjacent to Farah Park, renamed Laleh Park after the Islamic revolution, and was inaugurated in 1977. The building itself can be regarded as an example of contemporary art, in a style of an underground New York Guggenheim Museum. Most of the museum area is located underground with a circular walkway that spirals downwards with galleries branching outwards. Western sculptures by artists such as Ernst, Giacometti, Magritte and Moore can be found in the museum's gardens.

The selection of the art was done under Farah Pahlavi and the budget was from the National Iranian Oil Company. Pahlavi personally met many of the artists whose work was part of the museum collection, including the Western artists Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Henry Moore, Paul Jenkins, Arnaldo Pomodoro. Some people involved in the process of selecting art were the Americans, Donna Stein and David Galloway, and Kamran Diba, the architect and director of the museum, and Karimpasha Bahadori, who was the Chief of Staff of the cabinet.

After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Western art was stored away in the museum's vault until 1999 when the first post-revolution exhibition was held of western art showing artists such as David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. Now pieces of the Western art collection are shown for a few weeks every year but due to the current conservative nature of the Iranian establishment, most pieces will never be shown.

It is considered to have the most valuable collection of Western modern art outside Europe and the United States, a collection largely assembled by founding curators David Galloway and Donna Stein under the patronage of Farah Pahlavi. It is said that there is approximately £2.5 billion worth of modern art held at the museum. The museum hosts a revolving program of exhibitions and occasionally organizes exhibitions by local artists.

Collection curator Donna Stein later wrote a memoir, The Empress and I: How an Ancient Empire Collected, Rejected and Rediscovered Modern Art (2021), because she felt she was not properly credited for her role in curating this collection.

Politics
In 1977, the Empress of Iran, Farah Pahlavi, purchased expensive Western artwork, in order to open this contemporary art museum. This museum was a controversial act, because the country's social and economic inequalities were rising and the government at the time was acting as a dictatorship and not tolerating the rising opponents, a few years later the Iranian Revolution took place. A few art pieces did not survive the revolution including a public statue by Bahman Mohasses deemed un-Islamic and a 1977 Warhol painting, a portrait of Farah Pahlavi.

Le Monde art critic André Fermigier wrote an article in 1977 called "A museum for whom and for what?", "questioning the link between an Iranian child and a Picasso or a Pollock". And Farah Pahlavi responded to this criticism, noting that Iranians can understand modern art, not all Iranians were living in remote villages, and this issue with modern art was not unlike one that had existed in France.

A touring exhibition was planned for autumn 2016 in Berlin, (Germany), consisting of a three-month tour of sixty artworks, half Western and half Iranian. The show was to run for three months in Berlin, then travel to the Maxxi Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome for display from March through August. However, the plan had to be postponed because the Iranian authorities had failed to allow the paintings to leave the country, also noting that, since the revolution, these paintings had not been shown in Iran. Finally, on 27 Dec 2016, a press release by Hermann Parzinger, the President of the organising committee, Berlin's Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (in German : Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin), cancelled the exhibition altogether.

In 2017 the TMoCA unexpectedly staged a show in Tehran which included the very works which were selected to travel to Europe: Berlin-Rome Travellers, Selected Works ''of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.  It can be considered kind of an acte de résistance'' on the part of the museum director at the time, since, with the advent of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elected president of Iran in 2005, a harsh conservative wind has, to this day, blown away the relative openness and pragmatism of the Rafsanjani and Khatami eras.

Permanent collection
This is a list of artists featured in the permanent collection at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.


 * Ansel Easton Adams : Canyon de Chelly
 * Yaacov Agam : more than 10 oil and acrylic works
 * Aydin Aghdashloo : Identity: in praise of Sandro Botticelli and other works
 * Arman : Vagues après vagues
 * John Baldessari : several conceptual photographic works
 * Francis Bacon: a triptych, Two Figures Lying on a Bed With Attendants, 1968  ,, and Reclining man with sculpture, 1961  
 * Giacomo Balla : Futurist drawing, Figure in Movement, 1913
 * Bernd and Hilla Becher : several photographic works
 * Max Beckmann :
 * Max Bill : Rhythmus im Raum (Multiplied by Space), red granite, 1947-1948  
 * Georges Braque : painting Guitare, Fruits et Pichet, 1927, and bronze sculpture Hymen, 1939-1957  
 * Alexander Calder : "The Orange Fish” mobile (aka “Ogunquit"), 1946, and Prickly Pear stabile, 1964
 * Mary Cassatt : drypoint and aquatint print, Peasant Mother and Child, 1895
 * Marc Chagall : Family With Cock 
 * Eduardo Chillida : Estela a Pablo Neruda (Homage to Pablo Neruda), 1974  
 * Christo and Jeanne-Claude : Scale model of "Wrapped Reichstag", 1977  
 * Edgar Degas : a version of his Dancers 
 * Willem de Kooning : Light in August, 1946
 * Note : Woman III, 1953, was de-accessioned and traded in 1994 for a rare 16th century Persian manuscript of the Tahmasbi Shahnameh, the Book of Kings, containing precious miniatures  
 * Robert Delaunay : lithograph from the Windows series, related to the painting La Fenêtre, 1912 (Musée de Grenoble)
 * André Derain: Fauvist painting L'Âge d'or (Golden Age), 1905  L'Age_d'Or_(1905)_André_Derain_-_TMoCA.jpg
 * Jim Dine :
 * Jean Dubuffet : unknown title  
 * Marcel Duchamp : study (1911–13) for The Large Glass, 1915
 * André Dunoyer de Segonzac :
 * Don Eddy : Bumper Section XIII, 1970  
 * James Ensor : Mariage des Masques, 1926
 * Max Ernst: Capricorn, 1944 and Histoire Naturelle, 1923    
 * Seyed Mohammad Ehsai : Calligraphy Painting Toranj?
 * Parvaneh Etemadi: Vases, 1977  
 * Dan Flavin : Untitled, 1967  
 * William Henry Fox Talbot : photogenic drawing of a Single Fern, photographic negative print on salted paper, 1836-37
 * Mansour Ghandriz : Untitled, 1963
 * Paul Gauguin : Nature Morte à l’estampe japonaise (Still Life with Head-Shaped Vase and Japanese Woodcut), 1889
 * Alberto Giacometti : 1 painting, Portrait of Isaku Yanaihara, 1960 and 4 bronze sculptures a.o. Standing Woman I, 1960, La Cage, 1965-66 and Walking Man I, 1956-60
 * Gilbert & George : Mental 6, 1976  
 * Adolph Gottlieb : Black & Black
 * Marcos Grigorian : unknown title
 * George Grosz : The Unexpected Guest
 * Javad Hamidi : Composition
 * Richard Hamilton :
 * Duane Hanson : Boxers aka In Honor of Muhammad Ali, 1970  
 * Noriyuki Haraguchi : Matter and Mind aka Oil Pool
 * David Hockney : Untitled 
 * Edward Hopper :
 * Mehdi Hosseini : Untitled, 1976  
 * John Hoyland :
 * Jasper Johns : Pinion and Passage 2, 1966  
 * Douglas James Johnson : The Shield of Achilles, 1975
 * Donald Judd : Stacks
 * Paysage_(1913)_Fernand_Léger_TMoCA.jpgly Kandinsky : Tensions Claires, 1937  
 * Abbas Kiarostami:
 * Franz Kline : Untitled, 1955
 * František Kupka :
 * Farideh Lashai : Composition, 1997  
 * Fernand Léger : Paysage (Landscape), 1913
 * Sol LeWitt : Open Cube
 * Roy Lichtenstein : The Melody Haunts My Reverie, 1965, Roto Broil, 1961, Brattata, 1962,    '' and others
 * Morris Louis : No.34, 1961  
 * René Magritte : Le Thérapeute aka The Healer (bronze sculpture), 1967 ,  Le_Thérapeute_(1976)_René_Magritte_-_TMoCA,_Tehran.jpg
 * Marino Marini : Horse and Rider (bronze sculpture)
 * Leyly Matine-Daftary : Portrait of Nasrin, 1966  
 * Joan Miró : unknown title
 * برهنه اثر آمادئو مودیلیانی.jpgo Modigliani : Untitled
 * Ahmad Mohammadpour : Calligraphy Painting
 * Bahman Mohasses : Tryst, 1964 and Untitled, 1975  
 * Claude Monet : Vue de Giverny, 1886Vue de Giverny.jpg
 * Irnc102-Teheran-W parku nieopodal.jpg Moore: bronze sculptures Two–Pieces Reclining Figure, 1969-70 Three–Pieces Reclining Figure, 1968-69 and Working Model for Oval with Points, 1968-69
 * Giorgio Morandi :
 * Noreen Motamed :
 * Edvard Munch Self-portrait Thielska 297 M48.tif ]]Edvard Munch : Self-portrait, 1895
 * Jules Pascin :
 * Peter Phillips :
 * Pablo Picasso: Baboon and Young (bronze sculpture), Secrets (Confidences) or Inspiration (tapestry) and several paintings a.o. : The Painter and His Model, 1927   and Fenêtre ouverte sur la rue de Penthièvre, 1920  
 * Faramarz Pilaram : Calligraphic Painting, 1975  
 * Houses at Knokke.jpgle Pissarro : Houses at Knokke, 1894
 * Michelangelo Pistoletto : Green Curtain, 1967  
 * Jackson Pollock : Mural on Indian Red Ground, 1950
 * Irnc103-Teheran-W parku nieopodal.jpgdo Pomodoro : Rotante primo sezionale n. 3 (bronze sculpture), 1967-1975
 * Maurice Prendergast :
 * Robert Rauschenberg : Narcissus Convoy, 1977  
 * Man Ray : The Last Object, 1932-42 (Dada sculpture)  
 * Ad Reinhardt : Abstract Painting, 1962  
 * Pierre-Auguste Renoir : Gabrielle with Open Blouse, 1907
 * Shokouh Riazi : Portrait of Dariush Eskandani
 * Jean-Paul Riopelle : Baubess 11 
 * Diego Rivera :
 * Henry Peach Robinson : Landing the Catch 
 * Mark Rothko : No. 2 (Yellow Center), 1954 ,  Sienna, Orange & Black on Dark Brown, 1962,   and another painting similar to the latter  
 * James Rosenquist :
 * Georges Rouault :
 * Sterling Ruby :
 * Edward Ruscha : Fruits
 * Ali Akbar Sadeghi : Myth & Math, Piano War, 2011 and Unwritten
 * Behjat Sadr : Untitled, 1967  
 * Abolghasem Saidi : Untitled, 1972
 * Sohrab Sepehri : Trees
 * Jesus Rafael Soto : Canada 
 * Robert Smithson : Rock Salt & Mirror
 * Pierre Soulages : unknown title  
 * Frank Stella : Sinjerli Variations No 1-5, 1977
 * Parviz Tanavoli : bronze sculptures Sanctified 1, 1976, Poet and the Lion Bone, 1969, another sculpture & Shirin and Farhad
 * Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec : Girl with Lovelock (in French : Fille à l'Accroche-Cœur)
 * William Turnbull :
 * Cy Twombly : Untitled, 1963
 * Suzanne Valadon : Untitled (pastel), 1909
 * Louis Valtat :
 * Kees van Dongen : Trinidad Fernandez, 1907
 * Vincent van Gogh : lithograph of Worn Out : At Eternity's Gate, 1882, formerly in the Nelson Rockefeller Collection
 * Victor Vasarely :
 * Mohsen Vaziri-Moghaddam : Scratches on the Earth, 1963  
 * ورودی ویلا اثر ادوارد وویار.jpgÉdouard Vuillard : Entrance to the city, 1903
 * Andy Warhol : Suicide (Purple Jumping Man), 1965, The American Indian, 1976, versions of Campbell's Soup Cans, 1968, and several portraits of Mick Jagger, 1975, Marilyn Monroe, 1967, Jacqueline Kennedy, 1966 and 10 versions of Mao Zedong, 1972.
 * Tom Wesselmann : Great American Nude 
 * James McNeill Whistler :
 * Fritz Winter :
 * Manouchehr Yektai : Still Life, 1971-72
 * Hossein Zenderoudi : Untitled, 1972
 * Jalil Ziapour : Autumn Leaf or Zeynap Khatoun, 1962  

Temporary Exhibitions

 * List of exhibitions from 1977 to 2011 (in French)
 * A Manifestation of World Contemporary Art, 7 June 7 — 11 November 2010.
 * Pop Art & Op Art exhibition, 2012.
 * Rainbow, a retrospective exhibition of Otto Piene in collaboration with the Nationalgalerie Berlin, 24 Feb 2015 — 25 May 2015.
 * Farideh Lashai - Towards the Ineffable, 21 Nov 2015 — 26 Feb 2016, co-curated by Iran’s Faryar Javaherian and Italy’s Germano Celant.
 * Wim Delvoye at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, 07 Mar 2016 — 13 May 2016.
 * The Sea Suspended: Arab Modernism from the Barjeel Collection, 08 Nov 2016 — 23 Dec 2016, Barjeel Art Foundation.
 * Berlin-Rome Travellers, Selected Works of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, 07 Mar 2017 — 16 June 2017.
 * Tony Cragg: Roots & Stones, 24 Oct 2017 — 12 Jan 2018.
 * Portrait, Still Life, Landscape, 21 Feb — 20 April 2018, curated by Dutch architect Mattijs Visser.

Documentary film

 * ARD Iran-Correspondent Natalie Amiri : Der verborgene Schatz. Die legendäre Kunstsammlung des Iran (The Hidden Treasure. The Legendary Art Collection of Iran) | Arte, 2017, 55 min. (in German)

Interviews

 * Shahbanu Farah Pahlavi: the Empress of Iran talks about the legendary collection of modern and contemporary art assembled in the 1970s - Judith Benhamou-Huet Reports, 2019
 * How Her Imperial Majesty Queen Farah Pahlavi Built an Art Empire - Vogue Arabia, 2020
 * Donna Stein - Podcasts & Video on The Empress and I (donnasteiniran.com)