BBC World Service
He is called one of the world’s rarest article arts, but few people outside her host country know about it.
For decades, masterpieces like Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock held in the basement of the museum in Iran Tehran’s capital, preoccupied with mysteries.
According to estimates in 2018, a collection is worth as many as $ 3 billion.
Only a small part of the work is exposed to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, but in recent years, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art has portrayed some of its most striking pieces.
The eye -back exhibition at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, which opened in October 2024, was extended twice due to excessive public demand and lasted until January 2025.
The exhibition was widely considered one of the most significant exhibitions in the history of the Museum, and it also became the most visited.
The exhibition was first presented with more than 15 works, including the sculpture of Jean Dubuffet – marking its first appearance at the Iranian exhibition.
From abstract expressionism to pop art, a collection in the museum serves as a time capsule of the main artistic movements.
Among the works of art is Warhol’s portrait Farah Pahlavi – Iran’s last queen – a rare piece that mixes his pop art with Iranian cultural history.
By the way, the work of Francisco Bacon called two figures lying on the bed with the students show that the figures that look are spying on two goals of a man lying on the bed.
On the opposite wall in the basement of the Museum, the portrait of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is exposed to contradiction.
The museum was built in 1977 under the auspices of Pahlavi, the exiled widow of the last Shah Iran who was overthrown during the revolution.
Pahlavi was an avid advocate of art, and her cousin, architect Kamran Diba, designed the museum.
It was founded to introduce modern art with Iranians and bridge Iran closer to the international art scene.
The museum soon became a home of a stunning series of lamp work, including Picasso, Warhol and Salvador Dali, along with pieces of leading Iranian modernists, and quickly established himself as a lighthouse of cultural exchange and artistic ambitions.
But then a 1979 revolution came. Iran became an Islamic Republic because the monarchy was overthrown, and the priests took over political control under Ajatolah Khomeini.
Many works of art have been considered inappropriate for public portrayal because of nudity, religious sensitivity or political implications.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir Gabrielle with an open blouse was considered too scandalous. And Warhol’s portrait of former Queen Iran was too political. In fact, Pahlavi’s portrait was vandalized and torn with a knife during revolutionary unrest.
After the revolution, many works of art was closed, collecting dust in a basement that became a legend of art world.
It was only in the late 1990s that the Museum regained its cultural significance during the Reformist Presidency Mohammad Khatami.
Suddenly the world remembered what was missing. Art lovers couldn’t believe their eyes. Van Gogh, Dali, even Monet – everyone in Tehran.
Some pieces have been borrowed at major exhibitions in Europe and the United States, briefly reconnecting the collection with the Global Art World.
Hamid Keshmirshekan, an art historian based in London, studied a collection and called “one of the rarest treasure troves of modern art outside the west”.
The collection includes Henry’s Moore’s armchair series – an iconic piece of one of the most famous British sculptors – and Murara Jackson Pollock on Indian Red Play, a vivid example of American painting technique that pulses with energy and emotions.
Picasso Painter and his model – his largest canvas from 1927 – also, also a strong example of his abstract works from the post -Cubism period.
And there is Van Gogh at the Eternity door – one of the very rare survival of his first printing campaign during which he produced six lithographs in November 1882.
But for art lovers in Britain, the collection is out of reach. The British Foreign Affairs Directorate advises against all trips to Iran and says that British and British-Iranian double nationals are exposed to a significant risk of arrest, tests or detention.
Having a British passport or connection with the UK may be sufficient reason to custody by Iranian authorities, it is said.
The challenges remain for a museum operating under a tight budget. Changing political priorities means that it often functions more as a cultural center than as a traditional museum.
Still, it is still an extraordinary institution – a unlikely keeper of masterpiece – a modern art in the heart of Tehran.
