The Greatest Museum Never Known

The Empress of Iran's collection survived the Islamic Revolution. Will the country and the rest of world now get to see it?

- Peter Waldman and Golnar Motevalli

INSIDE THE ROTUNDA OF THE TEHRAN MUSEUM of Contemporary Art, a circular walkway spirals down from the street level, like an underground version of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York. A series of galleries branches out from there, giving up astonishing secrets from one of the finest—if forgotten—collections of 20th century art in the world. A show this fall included abstract expressionist paintings by Kandinsky, Motherwell, Pollock, Rothko, and Stella, to name just a few from the museum’s vault. Sculptures by Ernst, Giacometti, Magritte, and Moore are on permanent display in the garden. The corkscrew-shaped foyer wraps around a giant Calder mobile— its playful red shapes glinting in midair beneath the stern glares of Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei in portraits above.

On a crisp day in late October, the museum is an island of calm in downtown Tehran, a metropolis of 16 million people choked by traffic, smog, and rampant construction. The galleries are a ghost town, except for a dozen photography students who, for the $1.50 price of admission, have Jackson Pollock’s 1950 masterpiece Mural on Indian Red Ground all to themselves. The 9-foot-by-8-foot scarlet canvas, splattered with white, gray, and black streaks, one of Pollock’s largest paintings in his drip style, is regarded by many as his best. It was valued by Christie’s at $250 million five years ago. Down the ramp, the students arrive at a pair of wallsize Mark Rothkos, each valued at $100 million to $200 million. Their professor bids them to ponder a quote from the painter printed nearby: “A painting is not about an experience. It is an experience.”