thumb|Garden of Sculptures, near the museum|275x275px

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 a major collection of Iranian modern and contemporary art.

The museum was inaugurated by Shahbanu Farah Pahlavi (Persian: فرح پهلوی) 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 Shahbanu Farah, the idea for the museum originated in a conversation at a gallery opening in the 1970s, when the artist Iran Darroudi mentioned her desire for a permanent place to exhibit works. Diba collaborated with architect Nader Ardalan during the design phase. The building itself can be regarded as an example of contemporary art, in a style of an underground New York Guggenheim Museum. Western sculptures by artists such as Ernst, Giacometti, Magritte, and Moore can be found in the museum's gardens.

The art selection was done under the office of Shahbanu Farah with a budget from the National Iranian Oil Company.

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. 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.

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". 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. 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 December 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

thumb|"[[Still Life with Head-Shaped Vase and Japanese Woodcut" (1889) by Paul Gauguin]]

thumb|"Girl with Lovelock" (1889) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

thumb|"Worn Out: At Eternity's Gate" by Vincent van Gogh, [[lithograph (1882)]]

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

<!---♦♦♦ Please keep the list in alphabetical order ♦♦♦--->

  • 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
  • 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
  • Georges Braque: painting Guitare, Fruits et Pichet, 1927,
  • 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
  • Edgar Degas: a version of his Dancers
  • 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,
  • André Derain: Fauvist painting L'Âge d'or (Golden Age), 1905 thumb|"L'Âge d'Or" (1905) by André Derain
  • Jim Dine: <!-- needs to be identified -->
  • André Dunoyer de Segonzac: <!-- needs to be identified --> and Histoire Naturelle, 1923 Calligraphy Painting Toranj?
  • Parvaneh Etemadi: Vases, 1977 '
  • 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
  • Marcos Grigorian: unknown title<!-- needs to be identified -->
  • George Grosz: The Unexpected Guest
  • Javad Hamidi: Composition
  • Richard Hamilton: <!-- needs to be identified -->
  • Noriyuki Haraguchi: Matter and Mind aka Oil Pool
  • David Hockney: Untitled Untitled, 1976
  • Donald Judd: Stacks <!-- needs to be identified -->
  • Franz Kline: Untitled, 1955 Composition, 1997
  • Sol LeWitt: Open Cube
  • Roy Lichtenstein: The Melody Haunts My Reverie, 1965, Roto Broil, 1961, and others
  • Morris Louis: No.34, 1961 '<sup>,</sup>
  • Leyly Matine-Daftary: Portrait of Nasrin, 1966
  • Ahmad Mohammadpour: Calligraphy Painting
  • Bahman Mohasses: Tryst, 1964 and Untitled, 1975 Three–Pieces Reclining Figure, 1968-69 and Working Model for Oval with Points, 1968-69
  • Giorgio Morandi: <!-- needs to be identified --> Calligraphic Painting, 1975
  • Michelangelo Pistoletto: Green Curtain, 1967
  • thumb|"Rotante primo sezionale n. 3" (1967-1975) by Arnaldo PomodoroArnaldo Pomodoro: Rotante primo sezionale n. 3 (bronze sculpture), 1967-1975
  • Maurice Prendergast: <!-- needs to be identified -->
  • Shokouh Riazi: Portrait of Dariush Eskandani
  • Jean-Paul Riopelle: Baubess 11 Myth & Math, Piano War, 2011 and Unwritten
  • Behjat Sadr: Untitled, 1967 Untitled, 1972 Trees
  • Jesus Rafael Soto: Canada
  • Pierre Soulages: unknown title
  • Parviz Tanavoli: bronze sculptures Sanctified 1, 1976, another sculpture <!-- needs to be identified --> & Shirin and Farhad
  • Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: Girl with Lovelock (in French : Fille à l'Accroche-Cœur)
  • William Turnbull: <!-- needs to be identified -->
  • Louis Valtat: <!-- needs to be identified -->
  • Vincent van Gogh: lithograph of Worn Out : At Eternity's Gate, 1882, formerly in the Nelson Rockefeller Collection
  • Victor Vasarely: <!-- needs to be identified --> Scratches on the Earth, 1963
  • Andy Warhol: Suicide (Purple Jumping Man), 1965, The American Indian, 1976,
  • Tom Wesselmann: Great American Nude Still Life, 1971-72 Untitled, 1972 Autumn Leaf or Zeynap Khatoun, 1962

Temporary Exhibitions<!-- needs expanding -->

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Portrait, Still Life, Landscape, 21 Feb — 20 April 2018, curated by Dutch architect Mattijs Visser.
  • Above the Fields, 9 March — 5 May 2024, curated by Masiha Rabiei
  • Adham Zargham: Memories of Nature, 15 May — 30 June 2024
  • Eye to Eye, 6 October 2024 — January 2025, curated by Jamal Arabzadeh

See also

  • International rankings of Iran
  • Safir Office Machines Museum
  • Modern and contemporary art in Iran

Further reading

  • Maryam Ekhtiar, Marika Sardar : Modern and Contemporary Art in Iran | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (metmuseum.org), October 2004
  • Kambiz Navai : An Architectural Analysis: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran, Iran, Archnet-IJAR (International Journal of Architectural Research), Volume 4 - Issue 1 - March 2010, pp.&nbsp;194–207.
  • Günther Uecker. Huldigung an Hafez. Homage to Hafez - Bemühungen von/With the efforts of Günther Uecker und/and Ehsan Aghaei, exhibition catalogue, Kunstverlag Till Breckner & Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Düsseldorf, 186 p., ISBN 978-3-9394-522-87, 2016 (in German, English, Persian)
  • Mehdi Hasani : A Review of Foreign Works in TMOCA, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, 2017.
  • Viola Raikhel-Bolot, Miranda Darling : Iran Modern: The Empress of Art, published by Assouline, 200 p., ISBN 9781614286349, 2018.
  • Donna Stein: The Empress and I: How an Ancient Empire Collected, Rejected and Rediscovered Modern Art, Skira, 280 p., ISBN 9788857244341, 2021.
  • Hamid Dabashi : What is our art doing in their capitals? | Arts and Culture | Al Jazeera, 2021.

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)

References

  • Kamran Diba, Artist and Architect
  • Iran, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art photos from the Berlin-Rome Travellers exhibition, April, 2017 | Flickr Album by Sun.Ergos
  • Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art - Contemporary Architecture of Iran (caoi.ir)
  • TMoCA | Darz, database on Iranian art
  • Photography Exhibition Gives Berliners a Rare Look at Tehran’s Legendary Modern Art Collection (artnet.com)
  • 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 (judithbenhamouhuet.com)