Iran and the Art of Detente

The vast billboards around Tehran are now fading in the sunlight, the ubiquitous portraits of scowling ayatollahs, the crude graphics proclaiming “Down with the USA”, the expansive murals depicting US military scrambling atop a mound of bleeding Iranian martyrs. They sit at odds with a wakening mood here, a hint of tempered optimism that the lifting of trade sanctions next year could usher in a new era of engagement with the west. It’s a situation unthinkable just a few years ago and still barely believed by many in the Iranian capital today.

But this November a small spark of optimism for the future flared as the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA), a state-run institution founded in 1977 by former Empress Farah Pahlavi and her cousin, architect and artist Kamran Diba, opened its doors to a foreign curator and an international entourage of guests for the first time since 1978, signalling the start of what many here believe could be a new era of global collaboration.

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