Nuke deal paves way for cultural diplomacy with Iran

PanARMENIAN.Net - The nuclear deal signed by Iran and the U.S. in July, the first step to lifting sanctions, has paved the way for cultural exchanges and joint projects between Iran’s museums and their counterparts in the U.S. and Europe. Remarkable exhibitions could be in the pipeline but first political hurdles have to be overcome, The Art Newspaper reports.

The director of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez, plans to visit Tehran for talks. The Paris museum’s head of Islamic art visited in June. France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, was one of the first to meet the Iranian leader, visiting in July after the nuclear deal was agreed. Italy’s foreign minister was quick to head to Tehran, too; the country is also in the forefront of cultural exchanges, lending four classical sculptures, including one from the Vatican Museums, to the National Museum of Iran in September.

If relations between Tehran and Washington, DC, continue to improve—President Obama has threatened to veto any attempt in Congress to scupper the nuclear deal—U.S. curators are well placed to establish closer links with their Iranian peers. Visits have already taken place; Iranian museum directors and curators travelled to the U.S. in 2013 as part of a State Department programme, with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) on the itinerary. Los Angeles and Southern California is home to the largest American-Iranian community in the U.S. Linda Komaroff, Lacma’s curator of Islamic art, who has visited Tehran a dozen times in the past two decades, says that if the U.S. does reach an accord with Iran “we will build on these existing relationships to collaborate on joint projects as well as eventually exchange loans”.