Iran Modern: The Impossible Collection

During her reign as the first queen in Iranian history, Empress Farah Pahlavi dedicated her life to serving the Iranian people, creating, and curating museums and festivals across the country. With a keen eye—and working with Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and the Met—the empress was able to amass one of the world’s greatest collections of modern art for her country, including works by van Gogh, Picasso, Bacon, and de Kooning. She empowered a generation of young Iranian artists, visited the studios of artists like Henry Moore and Chagall, and commissioned works directly from a young Andy Warhol, who paid visit to the Royal Palace, in the name of establishing her country as a cultural vanguard. Then, in 1979, the unimaginable happened, and the Iran that emerged after the Revolution changed everything. Iran Modern: The Empress of Art uncovers the lost story of Farah Pahlavi’s amazing journey from Empress to exile and illuminates the near-forgotten collection of contemporary art she left behind.