Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, closed from May 2018 due to reconstruction, was planned to be opened at November 2018. However general manager of the Center for Visual Arts of Iran, Hadi Mozaffari, has announced recently that its reconstruction will continue till May 2019.

Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, a noble place in the center of Tehran, has hosted modern and contemporary art works of many Iranian as well as international artists like Picasso, Van Gogh, Dali, Pollock, Moore and Matisse. Art related events also were held at the museum occasionally providing an opportunity for artists to show their works and also for art lovers to enjoy taste and talent of Iranian artists.

After Iran revolution of 1979, more than 1500 works of western artists had been restored for almost 20 years in museum’s vault. The first exhibition containing western art works has been in 1999 and since then the works kept in the vault would be shown periodically.

The museum designed by Kamran Diba, was built in 1977 mostly underground and in three floors with cinemateque, library, coffee shop, book shop and photography workshop. Its architecture is impressive. It was inspired by Iran’s historical architectures as well as modern buildings in western countries and is fascinating for many visitors. The chief manager of the museum, Ali Mohammad Zare, had said before that in renovating the building, they also consulted Mr. Diba, we should just wait for the outcome in months.

The concrete building of museum, a manifestation of modern and traditional architecture, was once designed to hold almost 600-1000 artworks, but now owns more than 4000 works including drawings, paintings, sculptures and pictures. Though the building had been repaired twice before, it had to be reconstructed to solve the problems related to temperature, moisture, humidity and light which may damage the art works.

Mozaffari declared that the delay has been caused due to financial problems and management misconceptions. He said that the vault’s temperature was not properly adjusted and the ventilation system should be repaired. The vault itself has to be reconstructed to increase its capacity for more than 3200 works. They will first reconstruct the galleries, then the vault; so the art works will be will be transferred to the galleries during the time of vault’s renovation.

He also added that though the most attention has been paid to the design and building of the museum, they are more concerned about equipping the vault with advanced BMS and fireproof systems. The other reason for reconstruction was to put sculptures in the building to save them from decadence and preparing a maintenance room to repair the artworks. Though more than 6 months has passed from the beginning of the museum’s reconstruction, 40 percent of its process is completed by now.

If you will be in Tehran during this time and are interested in cultural events, don’t worry, Tehran has many other private galleries with interesting exhibitions every week. You will definitely find them interesting to attend.