"You will see it," he says.
Ihave spent the last week and a half winding a trail to Sadeghi's door, visiting and phoning artists, professors, collectors and dealers, in Tehran and around the world, to piece together the story of the international collection (which really is not secret at all, its highlights cataloged on the museum's website, ir-tmca.com/collection/collection.htm).
It had been a dream of Empress Farah, wife of the late Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, who commissioned her cousin, the architect Kamran Diba, to design a new contemporary art museum for Tehran and fill it with notable works of contemporary Iranian art, and also international works that would allow the city to take its place among the leading centers of culture in the world.
"It wasn't a very long period for making such a collection. There was a bit of a rush. So he bought some masterpieces, some very beautiful pieces, and at the same time he bought some ordinary paintings, some not very important pieces," said Aydin Aghdashloo, a well-known Iranian painter who became the museum's first director.
Monet's "Environ de Giverny," Max Ernst's "Histoire Naturelle." Four of Andy Warhol's Mick Jaggers and a Mao Tse-tung. Georges Braque's "Guitar, Fruits et Pichet," and an Edvard Munch self-portrait. One of Edgar Degas' Dancers. Gauguin, Matisse, Renoir, Chagall, Klee, Whistler, Rodin, Duchamp, Dali. Photographs by Man Ray. Important Abstract Expressionists such as Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko.
"In the end, if they were to display these paintings, then you wouldn't need to go any other place to see 20th century Western art, actually," Aghdashloo said. "Because you can find at least a tiny sample of every important artist in this collection."
The debut in 1977 was a hit.
"There was a tremendously warm, until almost the end, very positive response to the collection. Of course, we always balanced contemporary Iranian with contemporary Western art," said David Galloway, an American art expert, now based in Germany, who was the museum's first curator.
As the political turmoil in Iran mounted, though, and the revolution neared, there were signs that the collection was increasingly seen as a symbol of the West's support of the shah's regime.
"I did this sort of farewell exhibition, and it included a painting by Wesselmann, a 'Great American Nude,' you know, one of those ladies with large pink thingies," Galloway said.
