Modernity from Tehran comes to Berlin
Press release from 10/21/2015
Steinmeier: We need the diplomacy of culture right now - Parzinger: Building bridges in conflict-ridden times
One of the largest and most valuable collections of Western contemporary art has been hidden away for decades in the Iranian capital Tehran, and soon the top works from the French Impressionists to American Pop Art are to be shown in Berlin for three months - SPK Vice President Günther Schauerte and the Director of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Majid Mollanoroozi, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding.
The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA) has one of the largest collections of contemporary Western art outside Europe and the United States. Gathered under the patronage of the last Iranian empress, Shahbanu Farah Pahlavi, and intended for the TMoCA, which opened in 1977, the works have only been shown in part since the Islamic Revolution and the fall of the Shah.
Now an equal number of Western art works are to be shown in Berlin for three months together with the same number of works by Iranian artists from the TMoCA collection. This was agreed by the Vice President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Günther Schauerte, and the Director of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Majid Mollanoroozi, in the presence of the German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the Iranian Vice Minister of Culture, Ali Moradkhani, in the Iranian capital. "Especially in times of difficult diplomatic issues, we need the diplomacy of culture all the more urgently. I am delighted that the SPK has succeeded in signing the agreement on this important exhibition project. It will help to complement our image of Iran and, conversely, give Iran better access to our culture," said Steinmeier.
Foundation President Hermann Parzinger described the agreement with the Tehran museum as "building bridges in conflict-ridden times". Parzinger continued: "While pictures are being destroyed elsewhere in the Middle East, they are being taken out of the cellar here. This underlines the civilising, unifying power of art. With this exhibition, we also want to consciously strengthen civil society in Iran. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the National Museums in Berlin have now created a solid basis for realising an extraordinarily exciting exhibition project together with the TMoCA, a juxtaposition of artistic forms. We would like to thank the Federal Foreign Minister and the German Embassy in Tehran for their great support for this project," said Parzinger.
The Nationalgalerie has been working with the Tehran museum since February 2015. At that time, the Otto Piene exhibition "Rainbow" was shown in the Iranian capital.
The Tehran collection brings together 1,500 pieces, including works of Impressionism and Cubism, Op Art, Pop Art and Minimal Art. The TMoCA is showing a selection of abstract painting and sculpture in its centrally located museum building in a successful presentation. In addition to the works on display, key works by Claude Monet, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol are also kept in the museum's depot. With Jackson Pollock's "Mural on Indian Red Ground" from 1950, Iran possesses a major work by the American artist. In Berlin, a significant selection of these works will be shown together with major works of Iranian modernism.
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art have expressed their interest in cooperating in other areas of museum work in addition to the exhibition project, for example in providing specialist support for the upcoming museum refurbishment of the TMoCA.
Further link
Press Release "Modern art comes from Tehran to Berlin" (21.10.2015) (PDF, 540 KB)