Iran increasing interactions with foreign museums: official

TEHRAN -- The director of the Center for Visual Arts of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Majid Mollanoruzi, has said that Iran is progressively pursuing interaction with foreign museums.

“Many major museums of the world, including museums in Switzerland and Austria, are keen to borrow works from the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMCA),” Mollanoruzi told the Persian service of MNA on Sunday.

Mollanoruzi, who is also the director of the TMCA, said that loaning an artwork to foreign museums should not be considered a breakthrough.

“We plan to get maximum benefit from this opportunity to promote Iranian art in the world,” he added.

He said that those foreign museums, which are seeking to borrow artworks form the TMCA for their exhibits, should arrange shows for artworks created by Iranian artists instead.

“Iranian visual art has not taken its proper place in the world… one of our aims for this interaction with foreign museums is to promote Iranian art in the world,” he stated.

In March 2013, the TMCA announced that the Spanish ambassador to Tehran had asked the TMCA to loan Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece “The Painter and His Model” to a Spanish museum for an art show.
 
Mollanoruzi said that international companies refused to insure the masterpiece due to the West’s sanctions against Iran causing the artwork to miss the Spanish showcase.
 
The TMCA collection comprises works by Picasso, Andy Warhol, Edvard Munch, Paul Cézanne, Edouard Monet, Jackson Pollock, Vincent van Gogh and many other world-renowned artists, which were all collected before the victory of the Islamic Revolution.
 
The museum has already loaned several works to international arts shows.

Pollock’s “Mural on Indian Red Ground” went to the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo for display at a retrospective of the American artist in 2012.
 
In 2010, Picasso’s “The Painter and His Model” was loaned to the Kunsthaus Zurich show and Dutch artist Kees van Dongen’s “Trinidad Fernandez” was loaned to Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.
 
“I believe that some of TMCA’s major works, including Pollock’s ‘Mural on Indian Red Ground’, which is the Mona Lisa of the TMCA and the most expensive piece of the museum, should not be loaned for art shows abroad,” Mollanoruzi said.

“Like many foreign museum, the TMCA does not want to loan some of its unique artworks to international exhibitions,” he added.

   
MMS/YAW
END