Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, (Persian: ???? ?????? ????? ?????), also known as TMoCA, is among the largest art museums in Iran. It has collections of more than 3000 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 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.
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Background
The museum was designed by Iranian architect Kamran Diba, who employed elements from traditional Persian architecture. It was built adjacent to Laleh Park, Tehran, 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.
After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Western art was stored away in the museums vault until 1999 when the first post-revolution exhibition was held of western art showing artists such as Hockney, Lichtenstein, Rauschenburg and Andy Warhol. Now pieces of the Western art collection are shown for a few weeks every year but due to 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 programme of exhibitions and occasionally organises exhibitions by local artists.
A touring exhibitions 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 has been indefinitely postponed because the Iranian authorities have failed to allow the paintings to leave the country. Also in 2017, a larger touring exhibition is planned for the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. It is hoped that revenue from these tours will allow the museum to upgrade the infrastructure as well as purchase new art, something it hasn't done for over forty years.
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Criticism
Purchasing expensive art work and opening the contemporary art museum in Tehran by the empress was a controversial topic at the day in 1977, as social and economic inequalities were rising and the government was a dictatorship not tolerating the rising opponents. Le Monde art critic André Fermigier wrote an article called "A museum for whom and for what?", "questioning the link between an Iranian child and a Picasso or a Pollock".
Artists represented
- Paul Gauguin: Still Life with Head-Shaped Vase and Japanese Woodcut
- Wassily Kandinsky
- Jackson Pollock: Mural on Indian Red Ground
- Claude Monet
- Camille Pissarro
- Vincent van Gogh: At Eternity's Gate
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Gabrielle with Open Blouse
- James Ensor
- Édouard Vuillard
- André Dunoyer de Segonzac
- Jules Pascin
- André Derain: Golden Age
- Louis Valtat
- Georges Rouault
- Fernand Léger
- Pablo Picasso: Baboon and Young, Painter and Model
- Alberto Giacometti: Standing Woman, Walking Man 1
- Francis Bacon: Two Figures Lying on a Bed With Attendants
- Max Ernst: Capricorn
- René Magritte: The Therapeutae
- George Grosz
- John Hoyland
- Diego Rivera
- Jasper Johns
- Andy Warhol: Suicide (Purple Jumping Man), portraits of Mick Jagger, Marilyn Monroe and Mao Zedong
- Roy Lichtenstein
- Jim Dine
- Peter Phillips
- James Rosenquist
- Fritz Winter
- Joan Miró
- Donald Judd
- Alexander Calder
- William Turnbull
- Victor Vasarely
- Adolph Gottlieb
- Richard Hamilton
- Georges Braque
- Jean-Paul Riopelle
- Edvard Munch
- Pierre Soulages
- Edgar Degas
- Mary Cassatt
- Maurice Prendergast
- Franti?ek Kupka
- Max Beckmann
- James Whistler
- Edward Hopper
- Henry Moore: Two-Pieces Reclining Figure, Three-Pieces Reclining Figure,'Oval with Points
- Giorgio Morandi
- Noreen Motamed
- Giacomo Balla
- Marcel Duchamp
- Noriyuki Haraguchi: Matter and Mind
- Marino Marini: Horse and Rider
- Aydin Aghdashloo: Identity: in praise of Sandro Botticelli and other works
- Parviz Tanavoli: Sanctified 1
- Sterling Ruby
- Henry Peach Robinson: Landing the Catch
- Ansel Easton Adams: Canyon de Chelly
- Bahman Mohasses: Tryst
- Arnaldo Pomodoro
- Yaacov Agam: More than 10 oil and acrylic works
- Manouchehr Yektai
- Sohrab Sepehri
- Abbas Kiarostami
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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